Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/82

22 Directors. In 1825 the Court, in confirming the grant of Rupees 500 per month which had been made to this Society by the Local Government, made the following remarks: “The Calcutta School Society appears to combine with its arrangements for giving elementary instruction, an arrangement of still greater importance for educating teachers for the indigenous schools. This last object we deem worthy of great encouragement, since it is upon the character of the indigenous schools that the education of the great mass of the population must ultimately depend. By training up, therefore, a class of teachers, you provide for the eventual extension of improved education to a portion of the Natives of India far exceeding that which any elementary instruction that could be immediately bestowed, would have any chance of reaching.” In consequence of the reduction of the Society’s means, the examinations have been discontinued since 1838. Unequivocal testimony is borne to the great improvement effected by the exertions of the School Society, both in the methods of instruction employed in the indigenous schools of Calcutta, and in the nature and amount of knowledge communicated; and I have thus fully explained the operations of this benevolent Association, because they appear to me to present an admirable model, devised by a happy combination of European and Native philanthropy and local knowledge, and matured by fifteen years’ experience, on which model, under the fostering care of Government, and at comparatively little expense, a more extended plan might be framed for improving the entire system of indigenous elementary schools throughout the country.

In these schools the Bengalee language only is employed as the medium of instruction; but the children of Mahomedans, as well as the various castes of Hindoos, are received without distinction. Mahomedans have no indigenous elementary schools peculiar to themselves, nor have they any regular system of private tuition. Every father does what he can for the instruction of his children, either personally or by hiring a tutor; but few fathers, however qualified for the task, can spare from their ordinary avocations the time necessary for the performance of such duties, and hired domestic instructors, though unquestionably held in more honor than among Hindoos, and treated with great respect by their pupils and employers, are always ill-paid and often superannuated, — men, in short, who betake themselves to that occupation only when they have ceased from age to be fit for any other. There are, moreover, few who are qualified to instruct their children, and fewer who are able to employ a tutor.

It cannot be doubted that there are many indigenous elementary schools in the Twenty-four Pergunnahs beyond the limits of Calcutta; but I have not met with any account of their number or condition. As far as appears from any document or publication within my reach, less information is possessed respecting the state