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The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c8.s1.t1: General: (pp. 6-9)

The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c8.s1.t1

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English

Contents

General: (pp. 6-9)

c8.s1.t1.1.1

By this description are meant those schools in which instruction in the elements of knowledge is communicated, and which have been originated and are supported by the natives themselves, in contra-distinction from those that are supported by religious or philanthropic societies. The number of such schools in Bengal is supposed to be very great. A distinguished member of the General Committee of Public Instruction in a minute on the subject expressed the opinion, that if one rupee per mensem were expended on each existing village school in the Lower Provinces, the amount would probably fall little short of 12 lakhs of rupees per annum. This supposes that there are 100,000 such schools in Bengal and Bihar, and assuming the population of those two Provinces to be 40,000,000 there would be a village school for every 400 persons. There are no *data* in this country known to me by which to determine out of this number the proportion of school-going children, or of children capable of going to school, or of children of the age at which, according to the custom of the country, it is usual to go to school. In Prussia (See Cousin’s Report on the *State of Public Instruction in Prussia*, p. 140) it has been ascertained by actual census that in a population of 12,256,725 there were 4,487,461 children under fourteen years of age; which gives 366 children for every 1,000 inhabitants, or about eleven-thirtieths of the nation.

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Of this entire population of children it is calculated that three-sevenths are of an age to go to school, admitting education in the schools to begin at the age of seven years complete, and there is thus in the entire Prussian monarchy the number of 1,923,200 children capable of receiving the benefits of education. These proportions will not strictly apply to the juvenile population of this country because the usual age for going to school is from five to six, and the usual age for leaving school is from ten to twelve instead of fourteen. There are thus two sources of discrepancy. The school-going age is shorter in India than in Prussia, which must have the effect of diminishing the total number of school-going children; while on the other hand, that diminished number is not exposed to the causes of mortality to which the total school-going population of Prussia is liable from the age of twelve to fourteen. In want of more precise data, let us suppose that these two contrary discrepancies balance each other, and we shall then be at liberty to apply the Prussian proportions to this country. Taking, therefore, eleven-thirtieths of the above-mentioned 400 persons, and three-sevenths of the result, it will follow that in Bengal and Bihar there is on an average a village school for every sixty-three children of the school-going age.

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These children, however, include girls as well as boys, and as there are no indigenous girls' schools, if we take the male and female children to be in equal or nearly equal proportions, there will appear to be an indigenous elementary school for every thirty-one or thirty-two boys. The estimate of 100,000 such schools in Bengal and Bihar is confirmed by a consideration of the number of villages in those two Provinces. Their number has been officially estimated at 150,748 of which, not all, but most have each a school. If it be admitted that there is so large a proportion as a third of the villages that have no schools, there will still be 100,000 that have them. Let it be admitted that these calculations from uncertain premises are only distant approximations to the truth, and it will still appear that the system of village schools is extensively prevalent; that the desire to give education to their male children must be deeply seated in the minds of parents even of the humblest classes; and that these are the institutions, closely interwoven as they are with the habits of the people and the customs of the country, through which primarily, although not exclusively, we may hope to improve the morals and intellect of the native population.

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It is not, however, in the present state of these schools, that they can be regarded as valuable instruments for this purpose. The benefits resulting from them are but small, owing partly to the incompetency of the instructors, and partly to the early age at which through the poverty of the parents the children are removed. The education of Bengalee children, as has been just stated, generally commences when they are five or six years old and terminates in five years, before the mind can be fully awakened to a sense of the advantages of knowledge or the reason sufficiently matured to acquire it. The teachers depend entirely upon their scholars for subsistence, and being little respected and poorly rewarded, there is no encouragement for persons of character, talent or learning to engage in the occupation. These schools are generally held in the houses of some of the most respectable native inhabitants or very near them. All the children of the family are educated in the vernacular language of the country; and in order to increase the emoluments of the teachers, they are allowed to introduce, as pupils, as many respectable children as they can procure in the neighbourhood. The scholars begin with tracing the vowels and consonants with the finger on a sand-board and afterwards on the floor with a pencil of steatite or white crayon; and this exercise is continued for eight or ten days.

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They are next instructed to write on the palm-leaf with a reed-pen held in the fist not with the fingers, and with ink made of charcoal which rubs out, joining vowels to the consonants, forming compound letters, syllables, and words, and learning tables of numeration, money, weight, and measure, and the correct mode of writing the distinctive names of persons, castes, and places. This is continued about a year. The iron style is now used only by the teacher in sketching on the palm-leaf the letters which the scholars are required to trace with ink. They are next advanced to the study of arithmetic and the use of the plantain-leaf in writing with ink made of lamp-black, which is continued about six months, during which they are taught addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and the simplest cases of mensuration of land and commercial and agricultural accounts, together with the modes of address proper in writing letters to different persons. The last stage of this limited course of instruction is that in which the scholars are taught to write with lamp-black ink on paper, and are further instructed in agricultural and commercial accounts and in the composition of letters. In country places the rules of arithmetic are principally applied to agricultural and in towns to commercial accounts; but in both town and country schools the instruction is superficial and defective.

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It may be safely affirmed that in no instance whatever is the orthography of the language of the country acquired in those schools, for although in some of them two or three of the more advanced boys write out small portions of the most popular poetical compositions of the country, yet the manuscript copy itself is so inaccurate that they only become confirmed in a most vitiated manner of spelling, which the imperfect qualifications of the teacher do not enable him to correct. The scholars are entirely without instruction, both literary and oral, regarding the personal virtues and domestic and social duties. The teacher, in virtue of his character, or in the way of advice or reproof, exercises no moral influence on the character of his pupils. For the sake of pay he performs menial service in the spirit of a menial. On the other hand, there is no text or school-book used containing any moral truths or liberal knowledge, so that education being limited entirely to accounts, tends rather to narrow the mind and confine its attention to sordid gain, than to improve the heart and enlarge the understanding. This description applies, as far as I at present know, to all indigenous elementary schools throughout Bengal.