It notices that Mr. Woodrow’s plan of Circle Schools on the basis of the existing indigenous schools, was found very successful, while the grant-in-aid system was not found to answer with them—
“Mr. Pratt was in consequence forced to the conclusion that the grant-in-aid system, as carried out under the existing rules, could not be made the basis of any extended system of popular education, these rules being regarded by him as ‘out of place in a country where the value of education is utterly unfelt by the mass of the people, based as they are on the supposition that the people of this country are so desirous of an improved description of instruction, that they will actually pay not only schooling-fees, but contributions from their private resources.’ The following remarks of Mr. Woodrow are sufficient to show the concurrence of that gentleman in Mr. Pratt’s conclusion. ‘The poorest classes do not want schools at all, because they are too poor to pay schooling-fees and subscriptions, and because the labor of the children is required to enable them to live. The middle and upper classes will make no sort of sacrifice for the establishment of any but English schools. Yet the rules in force presume the highest appreciation of education, because based on the supposition that the people everywhere pay not only schooling-fees, but subscriptions for schools. In fact, we expect the peasantry and shop-keepers of Bengal to make sacrifices for education which the same classes in England often refuse to make.”
It approves of an Educational cess on land—
“The appropriation of a fixed proportion of the annual value of the land to the purpose of providing such means of education for the population immediately connected with the land, seems, per se, unobjectionable, and the application of a percentage for the construction and maintenance of roads appears to afford a suitable precedent for such an impost. In the North-Western Provinces, the principle has already been acted on, though the plan has there been subjected to the important modification that the Government shares the burden with the landholder, and that the consent of the latter shall be a necessary condition to the introduction of the arrangement in any locality. The several existing Inspectors of Schools in Bengal are of opinion that an education rate might without difficulty be introduced into that Presidency, and it seems not improbable that the levy of such a rate under the direct authority of the Government would be acquiesced in with far more readiness and with less dislike than a nominally voluntary rate proposed by the local officers.”
Lord Stanley’s despatch of 1859 led to enquiries into Vernacular Education on the part of the Bengal Government, and the eliciting opinions on the point from a variety of individuals. We shall quote a few.
W. Seton-Karr, Esquire, Judge of Jessore, remarks:—
" I think that we cannot be far wrong if we enable a ryot to write a letter of business or congratulation to his patron or friend, to draw out a bond, to understand the terms of a mortgage, to cast up his accounts, to know if his receipts for rent are correctly signed, and to understand the scope of Act X. of 1859.”
Dr. Mouat, so long the able Secretary of the Council of Education, states:—
“The existing village schools may be to the last degree inefficient, and the Gooroomohashoys may be, as many of them are, as ignorant as owls. But they are old-established, time-honored Institutions, deeply grafted in
