Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/49

Rh The marked success that has of late attended the study of Sanskrit in an improved mode among English educated natives, shews that a corresponding movement may take place regarding the Persian and Arabic with Mahommedans. The Report of the Committee of Public Instruction for 1852, giving the detail of the reforms introduced by Pundit into the Sanskrit College, Calcutta, evinces what may be done—his reforms have been most successful.

Agricultural education, so important in its bearings as giving a practical direction to the education of the masses, is recognised as a vital branch of national education in Prussia and Ireland; boys who have to return to the plough from the School must have the subjects taught of a nature not to lead them to despise peasant life. In India as long ago as the beginning of this century, an able minute was written by the on the subject of Model Farms as forming a branch of Agricultural instruction, and he proposed appropriating a part of Barrackpore Park to the purposes of a Model Farm. Lord W. Bentinck revived the idea and enforced it in an elaborate minute. Adam in his Report refers to the question. It has been brought before the Bengal Government, by Babu Joykissen Mookerjee, who has made an offer of a considerable sum to Government to carry out the object. The following is some of the correspondence on the subject.

The Bengal Director of Public Instruction writes to the Secretary of the Bengal Government, May 27th, 1865:—

“His Honor will perceive that the measures recommended by the Landholders’ and Commercial Association are in the main directed to the same object as those proposed by Babu Joykissen Mookerjee, who advocates the formation of an Agricultural Department in connection with a new College for General Education to be established at, towards the maintenance of which he has offered a handsome contribution. The advocates of this course of action propose that arrangements should be made in connection with some one or more of our Colleges for General Education to provide systematic lectures on Agriculture and the sciences which bear upon it, for the instruction of the more wealthy classes of Native Society, who are the owners of landed property, and have a direct interest in its profitable management, in the hope that some of them may apply the teaching they receive to the improvement of their crops.

“If, however, a competent Lecturer could be found, it might be worth while to try the experiment of deputing him in rotation to the different Schools and Colleges, to deliver short courses of popular lectures, not as a part of the School business, but for the benefit of the general public, with the view of arousing attention and disseminating the idea that there is at least a possibility of increasing Agricultural profits by improved methods of cultivation, and by the exercise of greater care and discrimination in the breeding of cattle. In this way public interest may perhaps be excited, and the people led to discuss the suggestions made to them, and even prevailed on by degrees to bring them to the test of experiment.

“I am still, however, inclined to adhere to the opinion that, as far as regards the action of the Education Department, the manner in which most good is likely to be effected is by disseminating information in a very humble way through the agency of the Normal Schools for the training of Village School Masters. The pupils in these Schools are drawn from the country