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Province.

Table showing the state of Indigenous Education in Bengal and Behar.

District.

Proportion of children
capable of receiving
instruction to children
actually receiving in-
struction is as 100 to

Proportion of total a-
dult population to in-
structed adult popula-
tion is as 100

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In the total number of children are included both males and females and in the number of children receiving instruction are included those children, who receive domestic instruction, as well as those who attend schools.

Table showing the proportion of Scholars in the Elementary Schools, to the whole population in different European countries.

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Saxony, ditto ditto.....

Six departments of France (each)

Wurtemberg

Prussia

Baden (Duchy,)

Overyssel (Province of Holland)
Drenthe, ditto ditto.......

Friesland, ditto ditto

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Tyrol

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England

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It will be observed that Mr. Adam has taken the proportion of the total number of children (male and female) to the number of children receiving instruction; whereas, in the tables for these provinces, the centesimal proportion has been taken between the total number of male children and the number of children receiving education. As girls' schools do not exist, and as female education is a thing unheard of, it has not been considered necessary to admit into the calculations the number of female children. From general enquiries throughout the Presidency, it has been found that the total number of male children comprises about one-twelfth of the whole population. In the tables, this proportion has been assumed as the basis of calculation, and then the proportion has been given between the ascertained number of children receiving instruction, and one-twelfth of the total population. We are not in the possession of any statistics regarding the state of education amongst the adult population in these provinces; but a comparison can be instituted between the centesimal proportions of educated children, and educated adults in Mr. Adam's tables. And then, for these provinces, an inferential idea of the state of adult education may be deduced by parity of reasoning from the actual state of juvenile education. In comparing the condition of school instruction in the Lower and Upper Provinces, it must not be forgotten that Mr. Adam has included female, as well as male, children in his estimate of the juvenile population; whereas, in these provinces, the number of male children only has been calculated. Now, the number of female children must be considered at least equal to that of the male. The statistical results can therefore be only balanced by doubling the centesimal proportions in the tabular statement for these provinces. Also it should not be for gotten, that Mr. Adam instituted enquiries into the state of domestic instruction, and in his returns has given the number of children receiving domestic instruction, as one-third of the educated community. No precise information on this head has been

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obtained in these provinces. It will be seen hereafter that from the constitution of the schools, it is extremely difficult to separate domestic from scholastic instruction. A vast number of children, who might be considered as receiving domestic instruction, have been returned as receiving scholastic instruction, to account for the difficulty which has been felt, in drawing a line between the one kind of education and the other. In the reports of one or two districts, allusions are made to domestic instruction independent of the schools; but in most districts no such supposition appears to have been entertained. And on the whole it may be concluded that the number of educated children, not included in the reports, is small.

It is happily fruitless to compare the statistical proportions of juvenile education in this Presidency, and in the countries of Western Europe. In these latter countries, no proportion can be said to exist between educated and uneducated children. There all children are of necessity educated, whether in town or country. In these countries every parent must send his children to school, or incur heavy legal penalties. Besides, he is bound by a moral controul, enforced by the universal consent and customs of society, and far stronger than the authority of any statute. Then each parent is compelled by law to combine for the support of the parochial schools, and in those tracts where, from the absence of peasant proprietorship, the people are considered too poor to educate themselves, the large landlords, the feudal lords of yore, are obliged to educate at their own cost the labourers that cultivate their estates. There are many philosophers, who would have pronounced it practically impossible to carry out such a legal system, because the minds and dispositions of men are not to be operated upon by such rough instruments as statutory enactments-because it might be advisable for a Government to educate the lower orders, who are unequal to the task of self-education, but to force people in a respectable station of life, to educate the children, would be worse than vain; and because official interference would be productive of harm rather than good. But such dogmas have been. utterly refuted by the actual experience of Western Europe. There the legal system of education is a vast machinery, spreading its magnificent frame-work over the whole country, the springs of which are supplied by the moral resolution and cordial co-operation of society, the foundations of which are laid in the hearts and minds of the people. Of course such laws, as those now in force throughout Germany and Prussia, would be highly unpalatable to the Zemindars of Bengal, or the great landholders of these provinces. They would nauseate the idea of being

compelled to educate their cultivators. But they might be urged and stimulated to contribute their efforts and influence towards the attainment of this end. Allusions to this point are to be found in the late resolution of this Government; and, when Vernacular schools were first set up in Bengal during the year 1844, the Sudder Board of Revenue expressly called upon the several Commissioners and their subordinates "to instigate the more opulent native inhabitants, whenever an opportunity is afforded, to a liberal support of the proposed institutions, as being one of the surest means of showing that they merit elevation and distinction from the Government ;" and, in their letter to the Bengal Government, the Board say "the more opulent natives of each district might be very usefully stimulated to establish, and place under the controul of the officers of Government, Vernacular schools, such as are now proposed, at their own expence.'

"*

It remains briefly to touch upon female education in India. In the great educational countries above alluded to, male and female education stand upon the same footing, and are carried to an equal degree of perfection. In India, the case is lamentably and notoriously the reverse. Female education is a thing almost unknown in the N. W. Presidency. Not only is its growth, in common with that of all kinds of education, withered by the chilling influences of prevailing apathy, but the active opposition of inherent prejudice is arrayed against it. Mr. Adam gives the following description of the spirit, which militates against it, at the same time supplying positive testimony to its absolute non-existence in the Lower Provinces. (Sec. XII. ch. 5). Speaking of native female schools established by benevolent Europeans, he says:-"The native prejudice against female instruction, though not insuperable, is strong; and the prejudice against the object should not be increased by the nature of the means employed to effect it. Now it appears nearly certain, that, independent of the prejudice against the object, native parents of respectable rank must be unwilling to allow their daughters, contrary to the custom of Native Society, to leave their own homes, and their own neighbourhoods, and proceed to a distance, greater or less in different cases, to receive instruction. To re-assure the minds of native parents, native matrons are employed, as messengers and protectors to conduct the girls to and from school; but it is evident that this does not inspire confidence, for, with scarcely any exception, it is only the children of the very poorest and lowest castes that attend the girls' schools." Further on, in Chapter XV., Mr. Adam writes,

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* Vide General Report on Education in the Lower Province of the Bengal Presidency, for 1844-45 and 1845-46,

"It has been already shown that the schools for girls are exclusively of European origin; and I made it an object to ascertain in those localities, in which a census of the population was taken, whether the absence of public means of native origin for the instruction of the girls was to any extent compensated by domestic instruction. The result is, that in Thanahs Nanglia (Birbhum), Culna (Burdwan), Jehanabad (South Behar), Bhowara (Tirhut), domestic instruction was not in any one instance shared by the girls in those families, in which the boys enjoyed its benefits; and that, in the city of Murshedabad, and the thanah of Doulut bazar in the Murshedabad district, I found only five, and these Mussulman families, in which the daughters received some instruction at home.This is another feature in the degraded condition of Native Society. The whole of the juvenile female population, with exceptions so few, that they can scarcely be estimated, are growing up without a single ray of instruction to dawn upon their minds."

In the reports for the North Western Provinces, we read of six schools for Punjabi girls in the city of Delhi, and of one female Hindu instructress in Ajmir. No other girl schools whatever, we believe, are mentioned. But we conjecture that, in Mussulman families, the girls do not unfrequently receive some domestic instruction. In the present state of the native mind, it seems hopeless to introduce any system of public instruction available for girls and private instruction (the only kind of education which native parents would allow their daughters to receive) is a matter beyond the controul or influence of any Government.

Having thus completed the first division of our subject-namely, the class to be educated, we pass on to the second-namely, the nature of the education to be given.

This portion of the subject may be most conveniently commenced by a brief retrospect of what has hitherto been done and written regarding Vernacular education and indigenous schools in the North Western Provinces: On the third of May, 1843, the superintendence of public instruction in the North Western Provinces was vested in the local Government; the final allotment of the funds was completed on the 20th March, 1844. The local Government was thereby entrusted with the annual sum of nearly two lacs, and with the controul of three colleges at Agra, Delhi, and Benares, and nine schools situated at some of the principal stations. At these schools and colleges, instruction was given in the English language and in the higher branches of education. The Colleges still remain: the schools have dwindled away. In April of 1849, only three of the latter were

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