What primary instruction is given is not regarded as a possible end in itself, but only as a means to passing an examination. A little reflection must show that this is exactly the reverse of what is wanted. Instead of a teacher priding himself on the number of his pupils, who have got Government appointments, it would be far more to the purpose if he could boast a long list of boys who, after learning to read, write, and cypher, had settled down contentedly to their hereditary occupations, and had proved the value of education by turning out their work in a more intelligent style than their fathers had done before them. This would be a guarantee of genuine progress, and would check that rapid decay of all indigenous arts and manufactures which is the necessary result of our pernicious system of schooling, which aims at converting all the rising generation into mere office clerks.
There is no occasion whatever for the Government to take up this line of business. If all our village schools were to be closed to-morrow, the only function they adequately discharge, viz., the training of Munshis for Government service, would be carried on by private enterprise with much the same results as at present. A craving for vernacular education by people who can earn their bread without it is the very last want that is felt by an ordinary community. There were schools for teaching Latin in England for centuries before the idea was entertained that the masses required to be taught English. A similar superstition survives in India, and we encourage it by our village schools for Persian and Urdu. We exhaust the resources of Government in making a free gift of professional training to people who are quite able to provide it for themselves, instead of applying all our means to the diffusion of a simple vernacular education, far more important in its effects on national progress, but less productive of immediate individual advancement, and therefore at once more deserving of, and more dependent on, State patronage. Even in such a Muhammadanized district as that in which I am writing, more than half the members of the different municipal committees can read only the true vernacular character of the country, i e., the Nágari. In the proposed rural tahsili committees the proportion would be still higher. Such men, having never been brought under the influence of our schools, cannot undertake the management of affairs in accordance with European ideas, and are necessarily quite unable to follow and check intricate accounts which are kept only in Persian and English. If left to themselves, they will either do nothing, or else, in all that they do, they will be absolutely at the mercy of their paid clerk.
