Page:The despatch of 1854, on General education in India.djvu/25

Rh also assist in the establishment of schools, by their advice, wherever they may have opportunities of doing so.

57. We confide the practical adaptation of the general principles we have laid down as to grants in aid to your discretion, aided by the educational departments of the different Presidencies. In carrying into effect our views, which apply alike to all schools and institutions, whether male or female, Anglo-vernacular or vernacular, it is of the greatest importance that the conditions under which schools will be assisted should be clearly and publicly placed before the natives of India. For this purpose Government notifications should be drawn up, and promulgated, in the different vernacular languages. It may be advisable distinctly to assert in them the principle of perfect religious neutrality on which the grants will be awarded; and care should be taken to avoid holding out expectations which, from any cause, may be liable to disappointment.

58. There will be little difficulty in the application of this system of grants in aid to the higher order of places of instruction in India in which English is at present the medium of education.

59. Grants in aid will also at once give assistance to all such Anglo-vernacular and vernacular schools as impart a good elementary education; but we fear that the number of this class of schools is at present inconsiderable, and that such as are in existence require great improvement.

60. A more minute and constant local supervision than would accompany the general system of grants in aid will be necessary in order to raise the character of the “indigenous schools” which are, at present, not only very inefficient in quality, but of exceedingly precarious duration, as is amply shown by the statistics collected by Mr. in Bengal and Behar, and from the very important information we have received of late years from the North-western Provinces. In organizing such a system, we cannot do better than to refer you to the manner in which the operations of Mr. Reid have been conducted in the North-western Provinces, and to the instructions given by him to the zillah and pergunnah visitors, and contained in the Appendix to his First Report.