Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar/Report 3/Chapter 1/Section 18

Section XVIII.

General Remarks on the state of Adult Instruction.

First.—The proportion of the instructed to the uninstructed juvenile population has been shown, and it now remains to deduce from the preceding details the proportion of the instructed to the uninstructed adult population—

		Total adult population.	Instructed adult population.	Uninstructed adult population.	Proportion of total adult population to instructed adult population is as 100 to
City of Moorshedabad	. . .	97,818	7,355	90,463	7·50
Thana Daulatbazar	. . .	42,837	1,772	41,065	4·10
Thana„ Nanglia	. . .	30,410	1,613	28,797	5·30
Thana„ Culna	. . .	81,045	7,308	73,737	9·01
Thana„ Jehanabad	. . .	57,573	2,835	54,738	4·90
Thana„ Bhawara	. . .	44,416	1,033	43,383	2·30

The total adult population is the population, male and female above 14 years of age, including the students both of Hindu and Mahomedan schools of learning as being generally above that age; and the instructed adult population is the total number of those who were ascertained to possess any kind or degree of instruction from the lowest grade to the highest attainments of learning. The result is a natural consequence of the degree of instruction found to exist amongst the juvenile population, and is confirmatory of the proportions given in p. 232. The Culna thana of the Burdwan district in which the highest proportion of juvenile instruction was found is that also in which the highest proportion of adult instuction is found, viz., about nine in every 100, leaving 91 of the adult population wholly uninstructed. The Bhawara thana of the Tirhoot district in which the lowest proportion of juvenile instruction was found is that also in which the lowest proportion of adult instruction is found, viz., two and three-tenths in every 100, leaving 97 and seven-tenths of the adult population wholly uninstructed. The intermediate proportions have also a correspondence, thana Jehanabad having a proportion of less than five, and thana Daulatbazar a proportion of more than four, in every 100 possessing some kind and degree of instruction, leaving about 95 in the former and 96 in the latter wholly uninstructed; while thana Nanglia has a proportion of five and three-tenths and the city of Moorshedabad a proportion of 71/2 in every 100 possessing some instruction, leaving 94 and seven-tenths in the former and 921/2, in the latter wholly uninstructed. Thus in the comparison of one locality with another of the state of adult instruction is found to rise and fall with the state of juvenile instruction, and although this is what might have been anticipated on the most obvious grounds, yet the actual correspondence deserves to be distinctly indicated for the sake of the confirmation which it gives to the general accuracy of the numerous details and calculations by which the conclusion has been established.

Although this correspondence is shown to exist, so that in comparing one locality with another, the proportion of adult instruction rises or falls with the proportion of juvenile instruction, yet the proportions are by no means identical. Not only are the proportions not identical, but in comparing the proportion of juvenile instruction in one locality, with the proportion of adult instruction in the same locality, the former is found to be uniformly higher. Still further, the excess in the proportion of juvenile instruction above that of adult instruction is found much higher in the Bengal than in the Behar thanas. These results are explained and confirmed by the conclusion at which we arrived on independent grounds in the early part of this Report, viz., that within a comparatively recent period certain classes of the native population hitherto excluded by usage from vernacular instruction have begun to aspire to its advantages, and that this hitherto unobserved movement in native society has taken place to a greater extent in Bengal than in Behar. Such a movement must apparently have the effect which has been found actually to exist, that of increasing the proportion of juvenile instruction as compared with that of adult instruction and of increasing it in a higher ratio in Bengal than in Behar. The increase is not so great in the city of Moorshedabad as in the Bengal Mofussil thanas.

Second.—In speaking of the total amount of adult instruction very different kitids and degrees of instruction are included under that general term. The attainments of those, both Hindus and Musalmans, who have received a learned education, and who are engaged in the business of teaching, have been already described, and the character of the learned who do not teach does not materially differ except that in general their acquirements are inferior and their poverty greater. They are most frequently engaged in the duties of the priesthood, but I met with two Police Daroghas, one of whom had some pretensions to Hindu and the other to Mahomedan learning. The degree of instruction possessed by those who have not received a learned education, and who are engaged in the business of teaching with attainments superior to a mere knowledge of reading and writing, will be estimated from the account that has been given of the Bengali, Hindi, and Persian schools which they conduct. The next class composed of those who have neither received a learned education nor are engaged in the business of teaching, but who possess attainments superior to a mere knowledge of reading and writing, includes various degrees of instruction, but it was not easy to discriminate between them, and no attempt to do so was made in the districts of Moorshedabad, Beerbhoom, and Burdwan. In the city of Moorshedabad and in the districts of South Behar and Tirhoot such an attempt was made, and the result appears in the account given of the state of adult instruction in that city and in the Jehanabad and Bhawara thanas of those districts. That result is that beyond mere reading and writing, the instruction of the middle classes of native society extends first and principally to Bengali or Hindi accounts, next and to a much less extent to the Persian language, and lastly in a very limited degree to the English language. I met with only one person belonging to this class who devoted any portion of his attention to the cultivation of literature. His name is Kaliprasad Mukhopadhyaya the sherishtadar of the Magistrate of Beerbhoom. He is the author of a work in Bengali called Rasik Ranjan, describing the loves and adventures of Jaya and Jayanti. It is part in prose and part in verse, and contains about 380 pages. A copy is in my possession. The two remaining classes are sufficiently described by the designations already given to them as those who can merely read and write, and those who can merely decipher writing or sign their names. Nine women are found to belong to these two classes in the city of Moorshedabad and in thana Daulatbazar of the Moorshedabad district. In all the other localities of which a census was taken no adult females were found to possess even the lowest grade of instruction.

Third.—A knowledge of the number of instructed adults and of the nature and extent of the instruction they possess furnishes the means of estimating the amount of instrumentality existing in native society which, in a greater or less measure, may be made available for the improvement and extension of popular education. The following table has been constructed with a view to such an estimate:—

		Number of unlearned teachers with attainments superior to a mere knowledge of reading and writing.	Number of scholars taught by the aforesaid teachers.	Average number of scholars taught by each of the aforesaid teachers.	Number of unlearned persons not teachers with attainment superior to a mere knowledge of reading and writing.	Number of children receiving neither domestic nor school instruction, being of the teachable age.	Average number of children receiving neither domestic nor school instruction to each of the aforesaid unlearned persons not teachers.
City of Moorshedabad	. . .	60	959	15·9	4,767	13,833	2·9
Thana Daulatbazar	. . .	25	305	12·2	555	9,797	17·6
Thana„ Nanglia	. . .	25	305	12·2	555	9,797	17·6
Thana„ Culna	. . .	93	2,243	24·1	2,424	15,257	6·2
Thana„ Jehanabad	. . .	53	366	6·9	992	14,690	14·8
Thana„ Bhawara	. . .	6	60	10·0	425	13,061	30·7

The first column exhibits the number of Bengali or Hindi and Persian teachers in the localities where a census of the population was taken; the second, the number of their scholars; and the third, the average number of scholars to each teacher. From these, it appears that the existing bodies of teachers in those localities are not sufficiently employed, and that the same number of teachers could instruct a much larger number of scholars. The highest average number of scholars to one teacher is in the Culna thana of the Burdwan district; and if the other averages were raised only as high, a large addition would be made to the instructed children of the teachable age without any other instrumentality than that which is now engaged in the business of teaching.

The fourth column contains the number of those adults who have neither received a learned education nor are engaged in the business of teaching but who possess attainments superior to a mere knowledge of reading and writing, constituting the most cultivated portion of the middle class of native society from which instruments must chiefly be drawn for the improvement of that class and of the classes below it. The fifth column exhibits from the table contained in page 110 the number of children of the teachable age, i. e., between 14 and five years, who receive neither domestic nor school instruction, constituting the class which needs the instruction that the preceding class is qualified to bestow. The sixth column shows the average number of children of the teachable age without instruction to each of the instructed adults capable of but not actually engaged in teaching, showing that if the whole number of uninstructed children were distributed among the instructed adults for the purpose of being taught, the number of the latter, particularly in the city of Moorshedabad and in the Culna thana of the Burdwan district, would be far more than sufficient to teach them all. This is on the supposition that the entire number of instructed adults could be spared from the other purposes of civil life to be employed solely in the business of teaching, but this supposition is as unnecessary as it is inadmissible, since especially in the two localities mentioned it is obvious that there would be a large surplus of instrumentality for the object required. The only locality of those enumerated in which there would apparently be no such surplus is the Bhawara thana of the Tirboot district where the number of instructed adults would, in the present state of things, even if they did nothing else, be barely sufficient to teach the children who are destitute of instruction.

According to these views the teachers of common schools, and those who in native society possess analogous qualifications, are the classes from which instruments must chiefly be drawn to promote general education, but these classes in their present state must not be deemed to represent the permanent amount of intellectual and moral instrumentality. For, first, the influences now acting upon native society have a tendency to raise the qualifications of those two classes. The very lowest and most degraded and hitherto wholly uninstructed classes have begun, as has been shown, to move upward into the class receiving the instruction of common schools. This will have the double effect of stimulating the class immediately above them to rise still higher in the scale of acquirement, and with the increased demand for instruction of increasing the emoluments of teachers, and thereby inducing more competent persons to engage in the business of teaching. Even, therefore, if the number of teachers and taught, instructed and uninstructed, should maintain the same proportions, still there will be an increased amount of moral means in the higher range of qualifications which those classes are now acquiring.

But, second, by the very supposition, the same influences that are carrying the instructed classes forward in the race of improvement will also increase the number of the individuals composing them and their proportion to the uninstructed classes. This conclusion does not rest upon questionable grounds. It has been shown that the proportion of juvenile instruction is uniformly higher and in some of the localities much higher than the proportion of adult instruction, and it follows that, when the present generation of learners shall become of mature age, the proportion of adult instruction will be found much higher and consequently the amount of moral instrumentality existing in society greater than it now is. Every individual who passes from the class of the uninstructed to that of the instructed both lessens the proportion of the former and increases that of the latter—both lessens the number to be instructed and increases the number of those who may be employed for the instruction of that lesser number. And the probabilities are great that a large number both of those who belong to the instructed class and of those who pass from the inferior to the higher grades of instruction would, with very little encouragement, be induced to engage in the instruction of others, for in proceeding from one district or from one part of a district to another, next to the general poverty and ignorance, few facts strike the mind more forcibly than the number of those who, with attainments superior to a mere knowledge of reading and writing, are in search of employment and without any regular means of subsistence.

Again, third, it is not only from below, from the uninstructed classes or from those who possess at present the inferior grades of instruction but from above also, from the classes of the learned, that additional instruments will be obtained for the extension of popular education. There can be no doubt that the habits and prejudices of the learned make them, if not hostile, certainly indifferent, in most instances, to the spread of education among the body of the people, but with gentle and prudent handling those habits and prejudices may be easily modified. I have met with individuals among the learned who, from benevolent motives, appeared anxious to do every thing in their power to promote the instruction of their countrymen, and with numerous individuals who evidently wanted no other motive than their own interest to make them willing agents in the same undertaking. These individuals were found in that class of the learned which is engaged in the business of teaching; and those of the learned who do not teach are in general so poor that I can have little doubt most of them would readily co-operate in any measures in which their assistance should be made advantageous to themselves. We have no right to expect that men in the gripe of poverty will appreciate the advantages to society and to Government which dictate to us the duty of promoting general education. They must perceive and feel that their own individual interests are promoted, and then their aid will not be withheld.