178 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Progress of Education in India, 1912-1917. Seventh Quinquennial Review. 

 Vol. I. By H. Sharp, C.S.I., CLE. [Pp. folio ii + iv +215, with 45 

 pages of illustrations.] (Bureau of Education, India, 1918. Price Rs. 3.10 

 or $s. 6d.) 



FORTUNATELY for the reader, this Review of recent progress of education in India 

 begins with an able summary, whereby the mass of statistics contained in the report 

 becomes intelligible. If a fault is to be found anywhere in the matter of lucidity, 

 it lies in the treatment of the examination system, or rather systems. These have 

 such great influence, often disastrous, in India, that a short chapter might have 

 been added to summarise and elucidate the references to the subject which are 

 scattered throughout the volume. 



It is not easy for the Englishman at home to visualise the conditions in India, 

 especially as regards education. Our own system, we think, is none too simple. 

 There we have a white race ruling over an empire of many different races, 

 religions, and castes ; in which one sex is almost entirely illiterate ; and in 

 which but 3 per cent, of the population is undergoing instruction. The central 

 Government, fortunately, has not made the blunder of trying to centralise educa- 

 tion : it deliberately confines itself to the consideration of the various problems 

 in the broadest manner and allows each province to continue to form and 

 administer its own system. Education is mainly in the hands of the universities, 

 local bodies, associations, and individuals. Even the privately managed institu- 

 tions are in receipt of financial aid from Government or from local bodies. These 

 private institutions include the purely indigenous schools in which are taught 

 Sanskrit, Pali, Arabic, the Koran, etc. 



The schools are of three grades — primary, middle, and high. At about five 

 years of age children may enter the primary schools, where the courses are 

 designed to take five or six years, though most of the pupils leave after about four 

 years. The instruction there is entirely in the vernacular. In some of the middle 

 schools, too, no English is taught ; in others, as in the high schools, although the 

 teaching is in English, the vernacular is also taught. Still higher in grade come 

 the colleges, which are affiliated to the universities. The education in the 

 elementary schools is now so cheap that it lies within the grasp of all. A system 

 of scholarships of gradually increasing value may carry a pupil from one institution 

 to another until he may win a substantial post-graduate scholarship. 



The Review calls attention to the striking top-heaviness of the education. 

 Although the percentage of the population enrolled in the elementary schools is 

 less than it is in Russia or Brazil and is only about one-seventh of that in England, 

 yet the percentage for the secondary schools is not far removed from the figure 

 for this country, and it is also high in the case of the university colleges. The 

 reasons given for these facts are:(i)the education is not compulsory, (2) child 

 labour is prevalent, (3) those who are sufficiently enlightened to send their children 

 to school frequently place a high value upon the education which is given. This 

 disproportion seems to be growing ; and as those who leave school too early soon 

 forget what they have learnt and in time marry totally illiterate wives, there are 

 growing up two well-marked classes, the well-educated and the ignorant — an un- 

 desirable state of affairs. 



The narrowness of the education is to be deplored. " The higher education in 

 India runs in a literary groove and the development of special vocational schools 

 is far behindhand. The genius of the country is speculative rather than practical. 

 The literary courses lead to Government employ and are a necessary preliminary 

 to the study and practice of the law. They adapt themselves to the traditional 



