Page:Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835 & 1838).djvu/71



The importance of more extended and systematic efforts for the promotion of Native education being strongly felt, it has been deemed a necessary preliminary measure to institute an investigation into the number and efficiency of the various descriptions of schools and colleges already in operation throughout the country, exclusive of regimental schools, and institutions under the immediate superintendence and control of the General Committee of Public Instruction. To know what the country needs to be done for it by Government, we must first know what the country has done and is doing for itself. This investigation has been placed under the direction of the General Committee of Public Instruction, and that body have, in the first place, authorised the preparation of a report, in which it is proposed to exhibit a clear and connected view of all that is known, or can be collected from good authority, respecting the present actual state of education in each district. Such a report will show both what is already known and what yet remains to be ascertained, and will thus in some measure contribute to rescue from oversight or neglect, the results of former investigations, and at the same time give a right direction to the further personal and local inquiries that have been ordered by Government.

The materials for this purpose exist in a very dispersed state, but they have been found to accumulate so much, that it has been judged proper to limit the report which is now submitted, to the province of Bengal, reserving the information that has been collected regarding the state of education in the other provinces for future reports. The sources from which the principal facts and statements have been drawn are five.