Page:History, Design and Present State of the Religious, Benevolent and Charitable Institutions.djvu/165

Rh noticed) by the cordial co-operation, and principally through the immediate agency of some of the most respectable and wealthy Natives of the Metropolis.

to the latest accounts, the Government Schools, established on a solid basis of excellence, have experienced little variation in their extension, or system of instruction. Parents of the lower class, being accustomed to take away their Children from the Schools, as soon as they have acquired sufficient knowledge to enable them to enter upon the common purposes of life,the benefit which the Institution was otherwise calculated to secure, is greatly diminished. The education of the children is consequently limited to the acquisition of a grammatical knowledge of their own language, to the power of reading works composed in a plain style, and on simple subjects, to writing with tolerable ease and correctness, and to the application with great readiness and accuracy of the rules of arithmetic, which are taught according to the European as well as the Native system. The higher order of Scholars are also prematurely removed, for the purpose of learning English, a knowledge of which is sup-