The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c8.s1.t1.1.3

c8.s1.t1.1.3

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.