Page:Second Report on the State of Education in Bengal (1836).djvu/26

Rh have opportunities of making unauthorised gains, and they enjoy a respectability and influence which the native school-master does not possess; but in other respects they are nearly on an equality; and, to compensate for those disadvantages, the salary of the common school-master is in general rather higher,—none of those whom I met in Nattore receiving in all less than three rupees eight annas, and some receiving as high as seven rupees eight annas a month.

There are no school-houses built for, and exclusively appropriated to, these schools. The apartments or buildings in which the scholars assemble would have been erected, and would continue to be applied to other purposes, if there were no schools. Some meet in the Chandi Mandap, which is of the nature of a chapel belonging to some one of the principal families in the village, and in which, besides the performance of religious worship on occasion of the great annual festivals, strangers also are sometimes lodged and entertained, and business transacted; others in the Baithakkhana, an open hut principally intended as a place of recreation and of concourse for the consideration of any matters relating to the general interests of the village; others in the private dwelling of the chief supporter of the school; and others have no special place of meeting, unless it be the most vacant and protected spot in the neighbourhood of the master’s abode. The school (a) in the village numbered 4 meets in the open air in the dry seasons of the year; and in the rainy season those boys whose parents can afford it erect each for himself a small shed of grass and leaves, open at the sides and barely adequate at the top to cover one person from the rain. There were five or six such sheds among 30 or 40 boys; and those who had no protection, if it rained, must either have been dispersed or remained exposed to the storm. It is evident that the general efficiency and regularity of school-business, which are promoted by the adaptation of the school-room to the enjoyment of comfort by the scholars, to full inspection on the part of the teacher, and to easy communication on all sides, must here be in a great measure unknown.

Respecting the nature and amount of the instruction received, the first fact to be mentioned is that the use of printed books in