Page:Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835 & 1838).djvu/111

Rh are proprietary, the lady who is at the head of each establishment being the proprietress. According to my information there are eight schools of this description in Calcutta, but I possess so few details of each individual school that I can only give this general notice of them. The pupils receive instruction in reading, spelling, grammar, letter-writing, geography, history, arithmetic, and sewing. Music also is taught in some of them and drawing in others. One of them is a preparatory school for little children in which the instruction is limited to reading, writing, and spelling.

The remark made on the third is still more applicable to the fourth class of English schools. They are loo little known. They are not sufficiently under the public eye. A parent anxious for the welfare of his daughters has no means, except by personal investigation which few can make, of ascertaining the principles, if any, on which education is conducted, the course of instruction pursued, and the rules of discipline enforced. A public good would be effected if, without infringing on the freedom of instruction or on the delicacy due to female establishments of education, the conductors could devise some means of bringing their seminaries more directly under the influence of enlightened public opinion.

5. The fifth class of English schools consists of charitable and orphan institutions, designed principally for the instruction of the children and orphans of the poor Christian population.

The Free School Society was formed in 1789; and in 1800 the Old Calcutta Charity school which had existed some time before 1756, was merged into it, at which date the funds of the united institution amounted to rupees 2,72,009-15-1. The object of the Society was to provide the means of education for all children, orphans and others, not the objects of the care of the Military Orphan Society. In 1813 the benefits of the institutions were extended to day-scholars. The Old Court-house was part of the property of the Old Calcutta Charity school, and it was transferred to the Government in consideration of a perpetual payment of 800 rupees per mensem, which continues to be made. In 1826, the governors of the Free school represented to the Bengal Government that in consequence of the reduction of the rate of interest on the Government securities in which their 6—1326B