Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/395

Rh

Another extensive class of the population unprovided with the means of instruction by the natives themselves is the female sex. I need not dwell here on the necessity of female cultivation in any country to its advance in civilization. This is, of course, admitted; and the privacy, subjection, and ignorance of the sex in this country, amongst both Hindus and Musalmans, are equally well known. All the established native institutions of education exist for the benefit of the male sex only, and the whole of the female sex is systematically consigned to ignorance, and left wholly without even the semblance of a provision for their instruction. The ignorance and superstition prevailing in native society, the exacting pride and jealousy of the men, the humiliating servitude and inaccessibility of the women, early marriages, juvenile widowhood, the interdiction of second marriages, and consequent vice and degradation, are obstacles to amelioration which appear all but insuperable. The only question that can arise is whether Government can with advantage interfere in the matter of female instruction, and this can be determined only by considering the actual or possible modes of interference.

There are three modes in which a beginning has been made to communicate instruction to native females. The first is by means of institutions in which they are not only taught, but fed, clothed, and lodged. The children are either orphans, or the daughters of native Christians, or of idolatrous parents. These institutions are exclusively under Christian management and the instruction is chiefly religious, but not to the exclusion of general knowledge and the arts of domestic industry. It must be evident that they give the teachers and superintendents an absolute control over the minds of the pupils, and this is the object of their establishment. They also tend to break the ties between parents and children in those cases in which the former are alive, especially if they are not Christians. The second mode is by the establishment of schools such as those described in Chapter 1st, Section XI., and referred to in Section XII., para. 5, p. 219. The children are the offspring of the poorest classes of native society. They are paid for attendance, and elderly females are employed to conduct them to and from school. This mode gives the teachers and superintendents a much less firm hold of the minds of the scholars, but it leaves the domestic tie unbroken. It is opposed to native prejudices, as it requires that the scholars should leave home to attend school, and it involves unproductive expenditure, as the matrons are paid only to secure attendance at school, not attention to study; and yet the reports of such institutions are filled with expressions