out distinction. And this is called encouraging them to exertion: as if the sure way to discourage exertion were not to treat eminent merit and mediocrity alike.
I propose that no prizes shall henceforth be given at the Hindoo College without the previous sanction of the Committee. It is idle to pass resolutions if they are to be broken in this way.
The next subject to which I wish to call the attention of the Committee is the exhibition which follows the distribution of prizes. I, like Mr. Sutherland, have no partiality for such ceremonies. I think it a very questionable thing whether, even at home, public spouting and acting ought to form part of the system of a place of education. What can the acting of boys be? At the very best, it can only deserve indulgence. And of what use is that sort of talent to them, even if they should acquire a considerable degree of it? But I think that in this country, such exhibitions are peculiarly out of place. I can conceive nothing more grotesque than the scene from the Merchant of Venice, with Portia represented by a little black boy. Then too I think that the subjects of recitation were ill chosen and offensive to good taste. We are attempting to introduce a great nation to a knowledge of the richest and noblest literature in the world. The society of Calcutta assemble to see what progress we are making; and we produce as a sample a boy who repeats some blackguard doggrel of George Colman’s about a fat gentleman who was put to bed over an oven, and about a man-midwife who was called out of his bed by a drunken man at night. Our disciple tries to hiccup, and tumbles and staggers about in imitation of the tipsy English sailors whom he has seen at the punch houses. Really, if we can find nothing better worth reciting than this trash, we had better give up English instruction altogether.
This is strongly my opinion, and not mine only. The Governor General, the Bishop, and other persons whose favorable opinion is of the greatest importance to the success of all schemes of native education, have expressed similar feelings. I would have an entire reform. I propose that, in future, instead of these recitations, the author of the best Essay shall read that Essay aloud after the prizes have been distributed. If this be thought too great a change, I at least hope that the recitations will be of a different kind from what they have hitherto been, that nothing but what is really excellent and valuable as composition will be rehearsed, that vulgar oaths and buffoonery will be carefully excluded, and that the whole exhibition will be less theatrical.—[Book K. page 156.] 10th May, 1837.
