The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c8.s1.t1.2.1

c8.s1.t1.2.1

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.