Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/383

Rh course that has been already described should be adopted and the same inducements offered; public examinations, presents of books to the teachers for themselves and for their scholars, the registry and publication of their names as those of approved medical teachers, and finally, eligibility to one of several endowments expressly appropriated in each district to the medical profession. In this way Government in a very few years might multiply approved medical teachers to any extent that the wants of the country might demand. The next step would be to extend the instructions of the approved teachers, and here again the same appliances offer themselves. To the teachers would be given books only in proportion as instructed scholars are produced, and the instruction of six scholars in each text-book would be required as an indispensable qualification for the eligibility of the teacher to an endowment. To the scholars the motives will be the pursuit of new and useful knowledge, the love of display at a public examination, the ambition of distinction by the registry and publication of their names as those of approved medical students, eligibility to the English school of the district, eligibility to a course of instruction in the medical college of Calcutta, and finally, eligibility to a medical endowment in their native districts. The effect of all this is, I think, not to be doubted; and it would be cheaply purchased by the employment of such means. It would revive, invigorate, enlighten, and liberalize the native medical profession in the mofussil; it would afford to the Calcutta college a perennial supply of well instructed native medical students from every district in the country; and it would send them back to their native districts still better instructed, and both qualified and disposed to benefit their countrymen, to extend the advantages of European knowledge, and to conciliate the affections of all towards their European rulers.

Sixth. It should be distinctly understood that all teachers of learning who accept of the patronage of Government shall be at perfect liberty to teach their own systems of religion, philosophy, science, and literature; and that the works prepared for their use shall contain nothing derogatory to their faith, or recommendatory of any other. On the other hand, it should be no less distinctly understood that the patronage of Government will be bestowed on the learned solely and exclusively in proportion to the degree of their proficiency in the new system of instruction, and to the degree of zeal, judgment, and integrity with which they co-operate in promoting the success of the measures adopted by Government for the instruction of the whole body of the people. In other words, they will neither be prohibited from teaching that which they believe, nor required to teach that which they believe not; but they will be rewarded only for doing or promoting that which, in the estimation of all, has a plain and direct tendency to benefit all.