Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar/Report 3/Chapter 2/Section 1

SECTION I.

Preliminary Considerations.

The object of this Section is to notice the most feasible of those plans for the promotion of general education which appear to me on consideration to be unsuited to the circumstances of this country and to the character of the people.

The first step to a sound judgment on the whole of this subject is to consider what features should characterize a plan likely to be attended with success. It will probably be admitted that any scheme for the promotion of public instruction should be simple in its details and thereby easy of execution; cheap and thereby capable of extensive or general application; not alarming to the prejudices of the people but calculated on the contrary to create and elicit good feelings towards their rulers; not tending to supersede or repress self-exertion, but rather to stimulate and encourage it, and at the same time giving Government the lead in the adoption and direction of measures for the future moulding and development of the native character, native society, and native institutions.

The simplest form in which Government influence could be employed for this object is that of mere recommendation, and in conversing with natives on the means of infusing fresh vigour into their institutions of education, they have sometimes expressed the opinion that a mere intimation of the pleasure of Government and of the satisfaction with which it regards such efforts, would be sufficient to cause schools to spring up and revive in all directions. This opinion was most probably meant in a sense very different from that conveyed by the terms in which it was expressed. The object of Government in adopting such a course would be to avoid interfering or dictating in a matter like education which may be deemed to belong to domestic and social regulation; but the adoption of such a course would be, and would be understood to be, the very interference and dictation which it is sought to avoid. The people in general are unable to appreciate such a procedure on the part of Government. They would neither understand the language employed nor the motives that dictate it. They would either suppose that there is some secret intention to entrap them into disobedience, or giving full credence to the assurance that no authority is to be employed to enforce the recommendation, it would be neglected. In either case Government and the people would be placed in a false relative position.

The people of this country in their present condition cannot understand any other language than that of command proceeding from Government. They do not perceive the possibility of their standing in any other relation to their rulers than in that which requires obedience. I had frequent illustrations of this in my own experience during the progress of my inquiries. Before seeing me, the mere announcement of my expected arrival was sufficient to inspire awe into the minds of the inhabitants of a village, and a simple request that they would give me such and such information respecting their village was not regarded as a request with which they might or might not comply according to their own sense of importance of the object, but usually as an order which it would be folly and madness to thwart or resist. They admitted the importance and utility of the object when it was explained to them but it was not because of its importance and utility that they gave the information required, but because submission to authority is the confirmed habit of the people. Appearing among them instructed and authorized by Government to inquire into the state of native education they could regard me in no other light than as one whom it would be illegal to disobey. In such circumstances all that could be done was to make my request and direct my agents to seek for information after a full explanation afforded in the least offensive manner in order that the people might do heartily what they would otherwise have for the most part done coldly and slavishly. The unauthoritative modes of address thus adopted led on several occasions to an inquiry in return from them whether I was acting only on my private authority or was really empowered by Government to conduct such an investigation. I of course assured them that I was fully authorized as the perwanahs addressed by the Magistrate to his Darogahs and others showed, but that I had been expressly directed, in deference to their feelings and to avoid the possibility of offence, to collect only such information as they themselves might, after proper explanations, voluntarily furnish. The adoption of such a style of address by a Government functionary was apparently new to them, and scarcely intelligible.

The truth appears to be that they are so completely bowed down by ages of foregin rule that they have lost not only the capacity and the desire, but the very idea, of self-government in matters regarding which the authority of the state is directly or indirectly interposed. They have no conception of government as the mere organ of law and its sanctions. They view it simply as an instrument of power whose behests are absolute, indisputable, and wholly independent of the voluntary co-operation of the individual members of the community. We have thus a Government which desires to rule by law, and a people that wills to be ruled by power. Mere power unsupported by the moral co-operation of the community is weaker than law would be with that co-operation but to call the latter forth must be one of the objects and effects of education by embodying with native public opinion the conviction that the interest of the state and its subjects are the same. It follows that, in devising means to produce that conviction, we must not assume that it already exists, and that the people will, at the mere recommendation of government, understood as such, adopt measures even for their own advantage, or that they will understand a recommendation from such a source in any other way than as a command.

The chief exception to the general submissiveness to every person or thing bearing the form or semblance of public authority regards the subject of religion in which they do not discover the slightest disposition to recognize the right of Government to interfere. On the contrary, joined to an exemplary tolerance of differences in creed and practice, there is a jealousy of any appearance of such authoritative interference. I had frequent occasions to remove from the minds of the learned and religious classes the fears they entertained on this point; and I have reason to believe that the occasional instances of opposition or distrust that occurred to me in which no opportunity of explanation was afforded originated from the same cause.

The next form in which Government influence may be conceived to be employed for the promotion of education is by making it compulsory, and enacting that every village should have a school. I hope the time will come when every village shall have a school, but the period has not yet arrived when this obligation can be enforced. Such a law, direct and intelligible, would be preferable to a mere recommendation which might be understood in a double sense, but it would be premature. It would be ordering the people to do what they are too poor and too ignorant to do willingly or well, if at all. It would be neither to follow nor to lead but to run counter to native public opinion. Those who in respect of caste or wealth constitute the higher classes do not need any such coercive means to induce them to instruct their children. Those who in respect of caste may be called the middle classes are convinced of the advantages of education, but they are in general poor and many of them would feel such a measure to be severe and oppressive. The lower classes consisting both of Hindus and Musalmans and of numerous sub-divisions and varieties of caste and occupation greatly exceed the others in number, and they are for the most part by general consent consigned to ignorance. In many villages they are the sole, in others the most numerous inhabitants, and such a compulsory law as I have supposed would be received with universal astonishment and dismay—with dismay by themselves and with astoinshment if not derision by the superior classes. A national system of education will necessarily have chiefly in view the most numerous classes of the population, but in their present state of moral and social preparation we can approach them only by slow and almost imperceptible steps. We can effectually raise them only by aiding their voluntary efforts to rise; and at present the prejudice against their instruction is nearly as strong and as general in their own minds as in the minds of others. In the preceding pages I have shown that it has begun to give way in Bengal and Behar; and in the records of the General Committee of Public Instruction I find an apt illustration both of the existence of the prejudice in the North-Western Provinces and of the fact that there also it has begun to lose ground. Mr. S. M. Boulderson, in an account of the schools in the Bareilly Collectorship, dated 29th January 1827, which he communicated to the Committee, makes the following statement:—“A strange instance of narrow-mindedness occurs in the report of the Huzzoor Tehsil Paishkar from whom the above detail is taken. He observes (and the Canoongoes have also signed the paper) that, under the former Governments, none but ‘Ashraf,’ viz., Brahmans, Rajpoots Bukkals, Kaits, and Khutrees among the Hindus; and Sheikhs, Syeds, Moghuls, and Pathans of the Mahomedans, were permitted to study the sciences or even to learn the Persian language; but that now all sects are learning Persian, Arabic, and Sanscrit. They, therefore, suggest the abolition of some schools where the children (of) Ahus, Guddees, &c., are instructed.” The strength and prevalence of the prejudice which could dictate such a suggestion will be understood when it is borne in mind that the native officers from whom it proceeded had been employed by Mr. Boulderson to collect information respecting the state of the schools in his district with the, no doubt, avowed purpose of encouraging education. The feeling however against the instruction of the lower classes, although general, is not universal; and the above statements shows that, although strong, it is not overpowering. In any plan, therefore, that may be adopted what should be kept in view is to recognize no principle of exclusion, to keep the door open by which all classes may enter, and to abstain from enforcing what their poverty makes them unable and their prejudices unwilling generally to perform.

Without employing recommendations or enactments that would be either futile or vexatious, another mode of applying the Public resources for the advancement of education might be by the establishment of new schools under the superintendence of paid agents of Government, who should introduce improve systems of instruction as models for the imitation and guidance of the general body of native teachers. It was with this view that the Chinsurah schools were patronized and the Ajmere schools established by Government, and it is on the same general plan, although with ulterior views to conversion, that most Missionary Schools are also conducted. This plan contains a sound and valuable principle inasmuch as it contemplates the practicability and importance of influencing the native community generally by improving native teachers and native systems of instruction; but the mode in which this principle is applied is liable to objection on various grounds.

The first ground of objection is that it has the direct effect of producing hostility amongst the class of native teachers, the very men through whom it is hoped to give extension to the improved system of instruction adopted. Every such Government or Missionary school, when established, displaces one or more native schools of the same class and throws out of employment one or more native teachers. If it has not this immediate effect, their fears at least are excited, and ill-will is equally produced. It is too much to expect that those from whom we take, or threaten to take, their means of livelihood should co-operate with us or look with a favourable eye on the improvements we wish to introduce. It appears from the records of the General Committee of Public Instruction, from which I derived the statements on this subject, that this was to some extent the effect produced by the Government Chinsurah schools; and in my recent journeys I have witnessed the dissensions that have arisen in villages by the rivalry of Bengali schools in which gratuitous instruction was given by paid agents of benevolent Christian societies with Bengali schools of native origin from which the teachers obtained their subsistence in forms of fees and perquisites. Instruction rightly communicated should produce peace and good-will; and we may be sure there is something wrong when the effect of employing means to extend education is perceived to be hate and contention leading even to breaches of the public peace.

Another point of view in which the plan may be deemed objectionable is that, to whatever extent it may succeed, it will practically take the management of education out of the hands of the people and place it in the hands of the Government superintendents. On such a plan school-houses are built, teachers appointed and paid, books and stationery supplied, instructions and superintendence given, all at the expense of Government; and without any demand upon parents for exertion, or sacrifice or any room being left for their interference or control, their children have merely to attend and receive gratuitous instruction. It does not appear that this is the way to produce a healthy state of feeling on the subject of education in the native community. If Government does every thing for the people, the people will not very soon learn to do much for themselves. They will remain much longer in a state of pupillage, than if they were encouraged to put forth their own energies. Such a course is the more objectionable because it is the substitution of a bad for a good habit, almost all the common or vernacular education received throughout the country being at present paid for. Government should do nothing to supersede the exertions of the people for their own benefit, but should rather endeavour to supply what is deficient in the native systems, to improve what is imperfect, and to extend to all what is at present confined to a few.

Again, a general scheme of new schools under public control and direction would entail on Government all the details of management, expenditure, instruction, discipline, correspondence, &c.; and this superintendence would either be adequate or inadequate to the purpose. If inadequate, the schools would be inefficient and would serve other ends than those of public instruction. If adequate, the expense alone would be a valid objection to the plan. The previous table exhibits the total number of children between 14 and five years of age in five thanas of five different districts, and the average number of such children in each thana is 13,307. The highest average number of scholars taught by each teacher, is not quite 25. Suppose each teacher was required previously to teach double that number, not less than 266 teachers will be required to instruct the children of the teachable age in one thana. Five rupees per month must be considered the very lowest rate of allowance for which, under an improved system, the services of a native teacher maybe engaged; and this very low rate would require an expenditure of 1,330 rupees per month, or 15,960 rupees per annum for the teachers of one thana. Besides teachers, school-houses must be built and kept in repair, and books and stationery provided. At least one superintendent or inspector would also be required for such a number of schools, teachers, and scholars; and this apparatus and expenditure would, after all, furnish only the humblest grades of instruction to the teachable population of one thana. The number of thanas in a district varies from nine or ten to sixteen or seventeen, and sometimes extends even to a larger number; and the number of districts in the Bengal Presidency alone amounts to about sixty-six, with a constant tendency to increase by sub-division. On the plan proposed all the expenses of all these teachers, schools, and superintendents in every thana of every district must be defrayed by Government. When the subject of national education shall receive the serious consideration of Government, I do not anticipate that its appropriations will be made with a niggard hand, but the plan now considered involves an expenditure too large, and promises benefits too inconsiderable and too much qualified by attendant evils, to permit its adoption.

Instead of beginning with schools for the lower grades of native society, a system of Government institutions may be advocated that shall provide, in the first place, for the higher classes on the principle that the tendency of knowledge is to descend, not to ascend; and that, with this view, we should at present seek to establish a school at the head-station of every zillah, afterwards pergunnah schools, and last of all village schools, gradually acquiring in the process more numerous and better qualified instruments for the diffusion of education. The primary objection to this plan is that it overlooks entire systems of native educational institutions, Hindu and Mohammadan, which existed long before our rule, and which continue to exist under our rule, independent of us and of our projects, forming and moulding the native character in successive generations. In the face of this palpable fact, the plan assumes that the country is to be indebted to us for schools, teachers, books—every thing necessary to its moral and intellectual improvement, and that in the prosecution of our views we are to reject all the aids which the ancient institutions of the country and the actual attainments of the people afford towards their advancement. “We have to deal in this country principally with Hindus and Mohammadans, the former one of the earliest civilized nations of the earth, the latter in some of the brightest periods of their history distinguished promoters of science; and both, even in their present retrograde stages of civilization, still preserving a profound love and veneration for learning nourished by those very institutions of which I have spoken, and which it would be equally improvident on our part and offensive to them to neglect.

Again, if the maxim that the tendency of knowledge is to descend, not to ascend, requires us to have first zillah, next pergunnah, and then village, schools, it follows that we ought not to have even zillah schools till we have provincial colleges, nor the latter till we have national universities, nor these till we have a cosmopolitan one. But this is an application of the maxim foreign to its spirit. Improvement begins with the individual and extends to the mass, and the individuals who give the stimulus to the mass are doubtless generally found in the upper, that is, the thinking, class of society which, especially in this country, is not composed exclusively, nor even principally, of those who are the highest in rank, or who possess the greatest wealth. The truth of the maxim does not require that the measures adopted should have reference first to large and then to small localities in progressive descent. On the contrary, the efficiency of every successive higher grade of institution cannot be secured except by drawing instructed pupils from the next lower grade which, consequently by the necessity of the case, demands prior attention. Children should not go to college to learn the alphabet. To make the superstructure lofty and firm, the foundations should be broad and deep; and, thus building from the foundation, all classes of institutions and every grade of instruction may be combined with harmonious and salutary effect.