1. While the pupils of English Schools have before them the prospects of a great number of prizes in the rich and numerous situations in every department opened to those who know English, Vernacular students have none of this, and even the order of Lord Hardinge of 1844, that in all Government situations and even in the lowest the man that can read or write should have the preference over one who could not, has remained to this day a dead letter.
2. The Grant-in-aid Rules requiring a contribution of help from the people is not applicable to Bengal, where the mass of the people have not the ability nor the willingness to contribute.
W. G. Young, Esquire, the first Director of Public Instruction in Bengal, in 1865, wrote as follows on this subject:—
“That this system (of grants-in-aid), viewed as a means of disseminating education among the masses of the people of Bengal, has failed, and that unless the present rules be modified and the conditions on which grants are given be relaxed, it must continue to fail, is, I believe, the unanimous opinion, not only of the Inspectors and myself, but of every one practically engaged or interested in the work of popular education; and I may perhaps venture to add that this is also, I believe, the opinion of His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor.”
Mr. Hodgson Pratt, Inspector of Schools, South Bengal, bore similar testimony:—
“I do not see how it is possible for Government with this fact before them to come to any other conclusion than that their measures have failed, and that the education and elevation of the mass of the population cannot possibly be effected so long as Government limits its assistance by the terms and conditions laid down in the Grant-in-aid Rules. It appears to me that such rules are out of place in a country where the value of Education is utterly unfelt by the mass of the people, for the rules presume the highest appreciation of the value of Education, 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: why, this would be too much to expect in scores of places in England, with a civilisation which has been ever steadily growing for centuries, and where the people are blessed with the advantages that race and religion can confer.“
Mr. H. Woodrow, Inspector of Schools, Eastern Bengal, wrote as follows:—
“In these Districts grants-in-aid for Anglo-Vernacular Schools will probably succeed, but they have failed, and will utterly fail, for purely Vernacular Schools.”
Lord Stanley’s Education Despatch gives the following summary of the opinion formed by Mr. T. C. Hope, of the
