learn English by all means. But let us also try to do something towards teaching the three R's to "Rural Bengal[1]."'
The credit of giving effect to the measures then inaugurated belongs to Sir George Campbell, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. His educational reforms mark a new era in that Province.
In 1870 the Department of Public Instruction was educating 163,854 children in Lower Bengal at a cost of £186,598 to the State. In 1874, when Sir George Campbell laid down the Lieutenant-Governorship, he left 400,721 children being educated at a cost to Government of £228,151. He had, in the interval, covered Bengal with primary schools; pieced together and resuscitated the old indigenous mechanism of rural instruction, and, without actually curtailing high-class education, had created a bonâ fide system of public instruction for the people of the country.
While Lord Mayo believed that State education in India must rest on the broad basis of the indigenous and village school, he also recognised the necessity of making special allowance for certain classes. The Muhammadans — the old ruling class in India — had fallen behind in the race of life under the British system of Public Instruction. Lord Mayo discerned clearly how far this result was due to their own neglect, and how far to the unsuitability or uncongeniality of our educational methods. He urged
- ↑ Referring to The Annals of Rural Bengal, which he had read on his voyage out to India.
