of the Burdwan district, in which the highest proportion of juvenile instruction was found, is that also in which the highest proportion of adult instruction is found, viz., about 9 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., 2 and 3-10ths in every 100, leaving 97 and 7-10ths of the adult population wholly uninstructed. The intermediate proportions have also a correspondence. Thus, in the comparison of one locality with another, 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.”[1]
From the preceding table and statements, it will be seen that the aggregate average for all the districts is no more than 512 per cent.! leaving 9412 of every 100 adults wholly destitute of all kinds and degrees of instruction whatsoever! What, then, must be the amount of educational destitution among the adult population of Bengal and Behar with their many millions?
In order to have the mind not only penetrated but absolutely saturated with a sense of the fearful extent of the destitution, let us endeavour to form an approximate estimate of the actual numbers of the juvenile and adult population that are without any educational instruction whatever, even of the humblest description, such as simple reading and writing. In the statistical tables supplied by Mr. Montgomery Martin, in his recent and most authoritative work on the subject, we find the aggregate population of Bengal and Behar estimated, in round numbers, at thirty-six millions. First, as regards the juvenile population, from the most favourable average furnished by European statists, it appears that 366 in 1000, or about eleven-thirtieths of
- ↑ “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, 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.”
