Page:Macaula yʼs minutes on education in India, written in the years 1835, 1836 and 1837 (IA dli.csl.7615).pdf/11

Rh The report is excellent, and does great credit to Mr. Adam. I approve of all Mr. Sutherland’s propositions except the last. Every grant of money ought, in my opinion, to be postponed, until we know precisely the amount of the sum at our disposal. If we cannot afford 50 Rs. a month for the school at Subathoo, we certainly cannot afford 100 Rupees a month for that at Bauleah.—[Book J. page 47.] 7th January, 1830.

''Mr. Adam’s second Report. Macaulay’s plan for promoting Vernacular Education''.—I have read with much interest Mr. minute on Mr. Adam’s valuable Report. I am a little inclined to doubt, however, whether we are at present ripe for any extensive practical measures which he recommends.

I do not see how we can either make the present teachers of elementary knowledge more competent, or supply their place as yet with fitter men. The evil is one which time only can remedy. Our schools are nurseries of School-masters for the next generation.

If we can raise up a class of educated Bengalees, they will naturally, and without any violent change, displace by degrees the present incompetent teachers. As to educating the School-masters who are already established, I quite agree with Mr. Shakespear in thinking that plan chimerical. As to sending others, at present we cannot do it if we would. I doubt whether we have the men, and I am sure that we have not the money.

What Mr. Shakespear recommends as to books I highly approve. But as to stipends I cannot agree with him. But I will not argue that question till some distinct proposition is made.

I would adopt Mr. Shakespear’s proposition about the Madrasa at Kusba Bagha. As to the endowments mentioned in the report, pages 43, 45, I do not think that it would be worth while to take any step respecting them. There is something so extravagantly absurd in hereditary professorships that we ought not to express any wish to have them revived. Of course if a man has a legal right to a professorship by inheritance, he ought to obtain it. But that is no business of ours. We can interfere only as a board of public instruction, and for purposes of public instruction, such professorships are evidently useless.

I am a little amused to observe that Mr. Adam who, in page 45, laments the discontinuance of four of these endowments and says that the revival of them would give “an important impulse to learning in the district," tells us in page 42 that two of these endowments are still continued. And what is “the impulse which they give to learning?" “The present holders" says he “are both mere grammarians, in no way dis-