Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar/Report 3/Chapter 1/Section 12

Section XII.

General Remarks on the State of Instruction in the Schools mentioned in the preceding Section.

It is impossible for me fully to express the confirmed conviction I have acquired of the utter impracticability of the views of those, if there are any such, who think that the English language should be the sole or chief medium of conveying knowledge to the natives. Let any one conceiving the desirableness of such a plan abandon in imagination at least the metropolis of the province or the chief town of the district in which he may happen to be living, and with English society let him abandon for a while his English predilections and open his mind to the impressions which fact and observation may produce. Let him traverse a pergunnah, a thana, a district, from north to south, from east to west, and in all directions. ⟨Let him note how village appears after village, before and behind, to the right hand and to the left, in endless succession; how numerous and yet how scattered the population; how uniform the poverty and the ignorance; and let him recollect that this process must be carried on until he has brought within his eye or of his mind about ninety or a hundred millions of people diffused over a surface estimated to be equal in extent to the whole of Europe. It is difficult to believe that it should have been proposed to communicate to this mass of human beings through the medium of a foreign tongue all the knowledge that is necessary for their higher civilisation, their intellectual improvement, their moral guidance, and their physical comfort; but since much has been said and written and done which would seem to bear this interpretation, and since it is a question which involving the happiness and advancement of millions will not admit of compromise, I deem it my duty to state in the plainest and most direct terms my conviction of the utter impracticability of such a design has strengthened with my increased opportunities of observation and judgment.⟩

⟨Although the English language cannot become the universal instrument, European knowledge must be the chief matter of instruction; and the circumstances in which the country is placed point out the English language, not as the exclusive, but as one of the most obvious, means of communicating that instruction. I have, therefore, watched with much interest and promoted by any suggestions I could offer every desire and endeavour on the part of natives to acquire a knowledge of our language. In the districts I have visited the desire cannot be said to be general, only because it is vain to desire that which is plainly unattainable; but it has been found to exist in instances and in situations where its existence is very encouraging⟩. I have met with a learned Hindu and a learned Musalman in different districts, each in the private retirement of his native village attempting by painful and unassisted industry to elaborate some acquaintance with our language, and eagerly grasping at the slightest temporary aid that was afforded. Nor is it only in individual cases that this anxiety is displayed. The school at Raipur in the Beerbhoom district was established and continues to be supported through the desire of a wealthy native landholder to give an English education to his children. The Raja of Burdwan’s school is the more remarkable because it is established in Burdwan where another English school exists, which, although under Missionary direction, has been liberally patronized by the Raja, and in which the scholars receive superior instruction to that which is given by the Raja’s teachers. The support he has bestowed on the Missionary English school may be attributed to European influence or to a desire to conciliate the favor of the European rulers of the country; but the establishment of a separate school in his own house and at his own sole expense can be ascribed only to his opinion of the importance of knowledge of English to his dependents, and a desire to aid them in its acquisition. The English branch of the institution at Sahebgunge supported by Raja Mitrajit Singh and superintended by his son, does not appear to have been of native origin; and generally speaking the desire to know English is found in fewer instances in the Behar than in the Bengal districts. In both it is chiefly learned and wealthy men that have sought it for themselves or their children; and, with a view to purposes of practical utility, it is to those classes in the present condition of native society that it is most suitable.

The orphan schools at Berhampore and Burdwan belong to a class of institutions which deserves special notice and encouragement not merely because such institutions supply the immediate wants of destitute orphans, which alone constitutes a strong claim, provided the means employed are not allowed to weaken existing domestic ties; but also because the object is to train them to the arts and habits of industry by which they may in after-life earn their own bread. In other schools a knowledge of books, of the words and phrases which books contain, and of the ideas which the understanding of children can apprehend or their memory retain, is taught; in these industrial institutions, some kind of art or trade is also taught, the physical powers are developed, enjoyment and profit are connected in the mind with labour as effect with cause, and thus both the capacity and the disposition are created that will prevent the youth so instructed from becoming a burden either to himself or to others, and that will make him an industrious and useful member of society. I am not aware of the existence of other institutions of the same kind in other parts of the country, and the two I have mentioned are still in their infancy. The increase of their number with a view to the improvement of the condition and habits of the lower classes of the people is eminently deserving of consideration.

The importance of the object contemplated by the establishment of native female schools, and the benevolence of those who have established them, cannot be questioned, but some doubt may be entertained of the adaptation of the means to the end. The native prejudice against female instruction, although 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 customs 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; and this unwillingness cannot be lessened if it should appear that they will be placed in frequent and unavoidable communication with teachers and sircars of the male sex and of youthful age, and in some instances with the corrupt and vicious of their own sex. 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 children of the very poorest and lowest castes that attend the girls’ schools, and their attendance is avowedly purchased. The backwardness of native parents of good caste may be further explained by the fact that the girls’ schools are under the sole direction of Missionaries; and the case of the Beerbhoom school shows that to combine the special object of conversion with the general object of female instruction must be fatal to the latter without accomplishing the former purpose. These remarks must be understood as strictly limited to the schools I have specifically described, and as inapplicable even amongst them to those in which the scholars, as in the case of female orphans, are under the constant, direct, and immediate superintendence of their Missionary instructors. ⟨In such cases the object and the means are equally deserving of unqualified approval; but it must be obvious that female instruction can never in this way become general.⟩