Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/325

320

Thus eighty teachers receive in all rs. 123-4-3, which averages to each teacher rs. 1-8-7. The mean rate of payment in each district, reducing all the items to a monthly estimate, is as follows:—

To all the vernacular teachers of Bengal and Behar, this affords an average monthly professional income of rs. 2-15-7! not above one-half of what is usually given in Calcutta to the lowest menials or domestic servants! It may well excite surprise how, at such a low and disproportionate rate of remuneration, even in this highly favoured clime, any human being, pretending to the character of teacher, can manage to subsist or maintain habits of external common decency. On this subject Mr. Adam subjoins the following explanations:—

"“It is possible that some sources of regular profit to teachers, in themselves insignificant, but to them not unimportant, may have been overlooked; and occasional profits, such as presents from old scholars, are too fluctuating and uncertain to be known or estimated. Teachers, moreover, often add other occupations to that of giving instruction; and when a teacher does not have recourse to any other employment, his income from teaching is most frequently valued chiefly as his contribution to the means of subsistence possessed by the family to which he belongs, since by itself it would be insufficient for his support. When a teacher is wholly dependent upon his own resources, and those are limited to his income in that capacity, the rate of payment is invariably higher.”"

The details already given abundantly show by what pinched and stinted contributions the class just below the wealthy, and the class just above the indigent, unite to support a school; and it constitutes a proof of the very limited means of those who are anxious to give a Bengali education to their children, and of the