Page:Young India.pdf/189

Rh the duty of the Government to look after the education of the child from the beginning until he was fit to fight his own way in the world.

The educational system of the country required radical changes, but what was most needed was that the Government should be prepared to spend adequate sums of money for its spread and in order to make it efficient. Lord Curzon’s pronouncements and programme therefore raised great hopes in the minds of the people. His University Commission was simply flooded with suggestions and statements from Indians and Anglo-Indians. The two classes, however, discussed the matter from entirely different standpoints: The Indians wanted greater facilities for education, more schools, more colleges, more masters, more stipends, an extension of primary school education, abler and better-paid teachers, freedom of private enterprise, ample provision for technical and industrial education; but what they wanted most and cared for most was that education should be more nationalised and humanised. The Anglo-Indians wanted a curtailment of the educational opportunities, a greater and stricter control of private enterprise, a raising of university standards, and a system of education which would curb the rising generation and make them more easily amendable to discipline and obedience.

Lord Curzon did go into all these questions, but the decision arrived at convinced the educated Indians that the motive which underlay Lord Curzon’s policy was the tightening of government control, the strangling of all independence in matters