Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/363

The incapacity and negligence of both teachers and scholars cause a great waste of time, of labor, and of money; and even the successful student is successful with a much greater consumption of these means than is indispensable. The economy of the plan now submitted is that in respect of time, of labor, and of money, it throws all the expense of many of the preliminaries of education and of all inefficient study and instruction upon parents, teachers, and scholars, and that it bestows the resources of Government only in reward of efficient study, for the production of the actual and perfect result of successful instruction, and for such apparatus as is necessary to prove that this result has been attained. The effect also will be more general than might at first appear. Let it be supposed that in a district of eighteen thanas, twenty-five school-masters in each thana will annually bring forward their pupils for examination; that each teacher can pass only six of his scholars; and that he is at liberty to offer to the extent of twelve, if any of the first six should be rejected. They will, according to this arrangement, bring forward 5,400 of their scholars, but of these not more than 2,700 can be declared qualified, and perhaps not more than half that number will pass the examination successfully. Even 1,350 scholars in one district and within one twelve-month thoroughly instructed in any one of the school-books I have described would be an ample return to Government for the expenditure incurred. But the benefit would not rest here. The whole number of scholars, 5,400, must be deemed by their teachers qualified for examination, else they would not be brought forward; and the unsuccessful condidates or those scholars whom, as it may happen, it was not necessary to examine at all, must have attained much, and many may have attained all, that would have been required of them. It is by no means necessary to suppose that even the whole number produced for examination will be the whole number instructed. On the contrary, they will be the very elite of the little village flocks, and those flocks will be composed of hundreds and thousands of other scholars in various degrees instructed in the same useful knowledge, all hoping one day to distinguish themselves, and all stimulated by the impulse which Government will have given to the cause of public instruction. The plan will ultimately be as economical to the people as to the Government. At first the approved teachers will probably affix a higher price on the superior instruction they will be qualified to bestow; but the facilities to acquire this superior qualification will be open to all, and many new competitors with equal advantages will rapidly enter the profession, while at the same time the demand for instruction will keep constantly increasing. Under those simultaneous and counteracting influences, a new rate of remuneration will come to be formed, the advantage of which, as in all improved processes that are in general demand will be in favor of the community; and when this new rate shall