Page:Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835 & 1838).djvu/110

40 instruction in spelling, grammar, geography, history, arithmetic, and also in geometry, algebra, and Latin.

The Classical Academy teaches spelling, reading, English grammar, arithmetic, and Latin.

There is a school in Goomghur, in which spelling, reading, English grammar, arithmetic, and history are taught.

A missionary residing in Entally has a school, of which I have not been able to learn any particulars whatever.

A classical and mercantile boarding and day-school is about to be opened by three of the Catholic clergymen lately arrived from Europe. It is to be called the College of St. Francis Xavier, will be placed under the patronage of the Vicar Apostolic, and superintended by the Rev. F. Chadwick as rector. Children destined for mercantile pursuits will receive a full mercantile education, comprising English grammar, reading, writing, arithmetic, book-keeping, geography, the use of globes, and ancient and modern history. Those destined for the learned professions will in addition to the foregoing, be taught the Latin and Greek classics, and mathematics. As far as I am aware this school has not yet gone into operation.

This is a very important class of English schools, for it is in these that the middling class of the indigenous Christian population receive their education. Several of them are little known, and what is occasionally said of others in the newspapers, is probably little to be trusted; for the notices that appear after the usual annual examinations may often be supposed to proceed from well-meaning but too partial friends. An impartial and independent estimate of the course of instruction and discipline pursued in these schools, I note here as a desideratum. It might have the effect of leading to the improvement of a class of schools which exercises a very extensive influence upon the character of the Christian population of this country.

4. The fourth class of English schools is distinguished from the preceding one only in being girls’ instead of boys’ schools. The pupils are the daughters of resident Europeans, East-Indians, or Indo-Portuguese, without any intermixture of the female children of Native parents. I do not suppose that the latter would be refused as pupils, but I am not aware of any instances in which their parents have sought instruction for them in those schools. The instruction is stipendiary and the schools