Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/80

20 the plantain-leaf in writing with ink made of lamp-black, which is continued about six months, during which they are taught addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and the simplest cases of the mensuration of land and commercial and agricultural accounts, together with the modes of address proper in writing letters to different persons. The last stage of this limited course of instruction is that in which the scholars are taught to write with lamp-black ink on paper, and are further instructed in agricultural and commercial accounts and in the composition of letters. In country places the rules of arithmetic are principally applied to agricultural and in towns to commercial accounts: but in both town and country schools the instruction is superficial and defective. It may be safely affirmed that in no instance whatever is the orthography of the language of the country acquired in those schools, for although in some of them two or three of the more advanced boys write out small portions of the most popular poetical compositions of the country, yet the manuscript copy itself is so inaccurate that they only become confirmed in a most vitiated manner of spelling, which the imperfect qualifications of the teacher do not enable him to correct. The scholars are entirely without instruction, both literary and oral, regarding the personal virtues and domestic and social duties. The teacher, in virtue of his character, or in the way of advice or reproof, exercises no moral influence on the character of his pupils. For the sake of pay, he performs a menial service in the spirit of a menial. On the other hand, there is no text or school-book used containing any moral truths or liberal knowledge, so that education being limited entirely to accounts, tends rather to narrow the mind and confine its attention to sordid gain, than to improve the heart and enlarge the understanding. This description applies, as far as I at present know, to all indigenous elementary schools throughout Bengal.

The number of such schools in Calcutta is considerable. A very minute inquiry respecting them was instituted when the Calcutta School Society was formed in 1818-19. The result was that the number within the legal limits of Calcutta was 211, in which 4,908 children received instruction. Assuming the returns of the Hindoo and Mahomedan population of Calcutta made in 1822 to be correct, this number is about one-third the number of Native children capable of receiving instruction, the other two-thirds being without the means of instruction in institutions of Native origin. In 1821, of these schools, [sic] 115, containing 3,828 scholars, received books from the School Society, and were examined and superintended by its officers and agents; while 96 schools, containing 1,080 scholars, continued entirely unconnected with that Society. In 1829, the date of the fifth report of the School Society, the number of schools in connection with it had been reduced to 81; and since that date there