Page:Tales of Bengal (S. B. Banerjea).djvu/27

Rh was purely academic. It came to India directly from English universities, which had stuck fast in the ruts of the Renaissance. Undue weight was given to literary training, while science and technical skill were despised. Our colleges and schools do not attempt to build character on a foundation of useful habits and tastes that sweeten life; to ennoble ideals, or inspire self-knowledge, self-reliance, and self-control. Technical education is still in its infancy; and the æsthetic instinct which lies dormant in every Aryan's brain is unawakened. A race which invented the loom now invents nothing but grievances. In 1901 Bengal possessed 69,000 schools and colleges, attended by 1,700,000 pupils, yet only one adult male in 10 and one female in 144 can read and write! The Calcutta University is an examining body on the London model. It does not attempt to enforce discipline in a city which flaunts every vice known to great seaports and commercial centres, unmitigated by the social instinct. Nor is the training of covenanted civilians more satisfactory. In 1909 only 1 out of 50 selected candidates presented himself for examination in Sanskrit or Arabic! Men go out to India at twenty-four, knowing little of the ethnology, languages or history of the races they are about to govern.