The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c5.s29.6

c5.s29.6

5. What is first wanted, therefore, is a school for educating teachers, as proposed by the committee of the Madras School-Book Society, in the letter of the 25th October 1824, which accompanied their second report. I think that they should be authorised to draw 700 rupees monthly from the treasury for the purposes which they have stated; namely, for the payment of the interest of money employed in building, and the salaries of teachers, 500; and for the expenses of the press, 200. I would next propose that government should establish, in each Collectorate, two principal schools, one for Hindoos and the other for Mahomedans; and that hereafter, as teachers can be found the Hindoo schools might be augmented so as to give one to each tehsildary, or about 15 to each Collectorate. We ought to extend to our Mahomedan the same advantages of education as to our Hindoo subjects, and perhaps even in a greater degree, because a greater proportion of them belong to the middle and higher classes. But as their number is not more than one-twentieth of that of the Hindoos, it will not be necessary to give more than one Mahomedan school to each Collectorate, except in Arcot, and a few other Collectorates, where the Mahomedan population is considerably above the usual standard.