Page:Second Report on the State of Education in Bengal (1836).djvu/21

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Elementary instruction in this district is divisible into two sorts, public and private, according as it is communicated in public schools or private families. The distinction is not always strictly maintained, but it is sufficiently marked, and is in itself so important as to require that these two modes of conveying elementary instruction to the young should be separately considered.

I. Elementary Schools.—These are enumerated and described in the Tables as of two denominations, viz., Hindu and Mahomedan,—there being in Nattore, of the former, 11 schools, containing 192 scholars; and of the latter 16, containing 70 scholars, which gives an average of 17 scholars in each of the one sort, and 4 scholars in each of the other. This was the only division that occurred to me at the commencement of the inquiry; but an inspection and comparison of the different institutions suggest that a more correct view of the state of elementary scholastic instruction will be conveyed by distributing them into four classes, according to the languages employed in them, viz.—first, Bengali; second, Persian; third Arabic; and fourth, Persian and Bengali, with or without Arabic.

1. Elementary Bengali Schools,—It is expressly prescribed by the authorities of Hindu law that children should be initiated in writing and reading in their fifth year; or, if this should have been neglected, then in the seventh, ninth, or any subsequent year, being an odd number. Certain months of the year, and certain days of the month and week, are also prescribed as propitious to such a purpose; and, on the day fixed, a religious service is performed in the family by the family-priest, consisting principally of the worship of, the goddess of learning, after which the hand of the child is guided by the priest to form the letters of the alphabet, and he is also then taught, for the first time, to pronounce them.