Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/91

 through or retire from the contest. I find from the returns of the past ten years that, for the first six, eighty per cent, of the passed candidates entered Colleges, while during the following three years, subsequent to its being made a test of Government service, the percentage of those entering Colleges to the total passed has fallen a little below sixty. I think some remedy should be applied, and the simplest that occurs to me would be to have a separate examination what in England would be called a middle class examination—as a test for the public service, and I would have this of a less severe nature, and of a more practical character, than the Matriculation Examination. I say I would make this public examination less severe; and I have come to this opinion because I feel sure that the mass of the rising generation are being educated at too high a pressure. They are, in fact, having too many subjects crammed into them, injuring if not wearing out their powers of mental digestion. It cannot be good for a growing lad, after a day^s hard schooling, to be obliged to work at home until nine or ten o'clock at night, and sometimes later, to be ready for the next day, as I am assured is ordinarily the case. At all events such an amount of labour cannot be needed for the greater portion of our youth. I have been in the habit of noticing the candidates for the Matriculation Examination during the past few years, and I was much struck on the last occasion to see crowding out of the pandal in the Town Hall compound such numbers of thin, pallid and sickly-looking youths. I have also been told by some of the older class of educated natives that they can now easily tire out their sons and other young relations in ordinary walking exercise. I do not go so far as one of the greatest benefactors to educational establishments in this Presidency, who said to me some time ago:—"In this generation you are destroying the bodies to strengthen the minds; in the next generation both mind and body will fail if you press them so hard." But I do think that it is a matter deserving the greatest consideration at the hands of those at the head of the Educational Department, whether we are not, by the excess of our educational training, injuring the bodily physique of the rising generation. They say at home that 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.' I believe the same holds good out here as regards Bappoo and Krishna and Ahmed and Nowrojee. I have been told that the native mind, particularly the Hindoo, is so peculiarly constituted that, once set in motion in any one direction, it will work on and on as in a groove and not feel the need of a change, and that in consequence, unless bodily exercise is actually made a part of the educational