Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/356

296 happen that by the operation of the system itself the expenditure on account of it will be lessened, and its efficiency at the same time increased, leaving the whole of the funds to be applied to the extension and consolidation of the plan by carrying it into new districts or provinces, by increasing the number of scholars in the same districts or provinces, by enlarging generally the course of instruction, or by establishing more numerous or more ample endowments until the various classes and grades of native society shall know all that it is important to their own welfare and to the prosperity and good order of society that they should be taught.

The general effect of this training upon the face of society, if steadily pursued, will be to increase intelligence, enterprise, and morality, to make the people better acquainted with their own interests and with the legitimate means of protecting and promoting them, and I confidently believe and hope to attach them by gratitude and affection to the European rulers of the country as their real friends and benefactors. It is not, however, to be denied that such a system of popular instruction will, in the higher order of minds, excite more ambitious aspirations than it can gratify,—aspirations which, if not gratified, may ferment into discontent or degenerate into crime. To maximize the certain good and to minimize the possible evil, an opening must be made out of the narrow circle of a native education into the wider scope for talent and for ambition afforded by an English education. In the present circumstances of the country the knowledge of English is for the native aspirant the grand road to distinction; and its attainment opens to him the prospect of office, wealth, and influence. To draw, therefore, the best and noblest spirits into close and friendly communication with ourselves, and to employ them for the greatest good of the country, I propose that those scholars who shall successfully pass through an examination in the highest vernacular class book shall receive a special certificate declaring them entitled, whenever a vacancy may occur, to receive admission into the English school of the district. The first effect of this will be to improve the working of the native part of the system by stimulating the vernacular scholars to zeal and industry, since a course of native instruction must be completed before eligibility to the English school can be recognized. The second effect will be to improve the working of the English part of the system by furnishing a constant and abundant supply of candidates whose minds have at an early age been expanded by a liberal course of native instruction; whereas at present much of the attention of English teachers in district schools is frittered away in teaching the mere elements of the English language to children who are uninstructed in their own mother tongue.

In suggesting this plan of vernacular instruction, my chief hope is not to obtain an unqualified assent to my views and recommendations, but to rescue the subject from mere generalities