Page:Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835 & 1838).djvu/103

Rh countrymen. The presbytery of Calcutta, recently constituted, have been invested with various powers relating to the Natives who seek to be employed in that capacity under the authority of the church of Scotland. It belongs to that body to prescribe the qualifications, literary and theological, required in such cases, and they are authorized to deprive a native preacher or teacher acting or believing wrongly of his license and station in the church, without reference or appeal to the superior judicatories.

An extension of this institution is proposed to be effected by admitting into it Native youth from other Christian seminaries, with a view to their being qualified to act in the capacity of teachers and religious instructors of their countrymen, under the superintendence and authority of the religious denominations to which they adhere. To meet demands also for non-Christian teachers it is proposed to offer the advantages of the institution to those Native youth who may desire to qualify themselves for becoming instructors of their countrymen in general knowledge, without reference to any profession of belief in the doctrines of Christianity. All the arrangements for the enlargement of the objects and operations of the Assembly’s school are at present, it is understood, only under consideration; but even with its original limited scope it must be pronounced one of the best managed and most successful English native schools in India.

At Kidderpore the Bengal Auxiliary Missionary Society in connection with the London Missionary Society has an English school containing 60 pupils; and in connection with this mission there is a Native Christian boarding school at Alipore, in which only Christian children, i.e., the male children of Native converts, are admitted, and in which they are boarded and lodged as well as instructed in English and Bengalee. In November, 1833, the latter institution was opened with 24 scholars; but in the latest report (1835) the number of scholars is not mentioned. In Bengalee the pupils are instructed in scripture, history and geography, besides English reading, writing and arithmetic. Their improvement in moral feeling and virtuous sentiments is stated to be remarkable.

The Calcutta Baptist Missionary Society has at Chitpore a Hindoo English school containing 120 scholars, and a Native Christian boarding-school for boys similar to that above- 5—1326B