156 



NATURE 



[October 23, 1919 



cock had been mated with a 42-plumed hen there 

 would' have been a full 42-plumed progeny. If 

 similar 42-plumed survivals occur, it should be 

 possible for farmers to increase by as much as 

 25 per cent, the crop of feathers from the same 

 number of birds, or, a more desirable outcome, 

 to procure the same quantity of plumes from three- 

 quarters of their present number of birds. Prof. 

 Duerden is to be congratulated on reaching con- 

 clusions at once of high theoretical interest and 

 great practical utility. 



EDUCATION IN INDIA.^ 



T^HIS is the second quinquennial review com- 

 -L piled by Mr. Sharp, Educational Commis- 

 siontr with the Government of India. Shortage 

 of paper and other conditions bred of a period of 

 war have compelled him to curtail his report and, 

 not without advantage, to diminish his statistics. 

 What remains is full of interest and significance, 

 especially, of course, to those who have some 

 first-hand knowledge of Indian education. There 

 is the inevitable, and in some respects useful, 

 comparison with the educational statistics of 

 various European countries and Japan. Of this 

 it is necessary to repeat that the comparison is 

 obviously unfair, even in the case of Japan. 

 British India is a continent rather than a country, 

 and is far more varied in culture and civilisation 

 than Europe or Japan. It is the great towns, 

 such as Calcutta or Bombay, that should be com- 

 pared with European countries, since there alone 

 are conditions sensibly similar to those of Western 

 nations. 



We should have welcomed, too, a fuller account 

 of the attempts to impart instruction in the local 

 languages. So long as British rule exists it will 

 be as necessary for Indians to learn English as 

 for educated Englishmen to learn French and 

 German. But English as a medium of instruc- 

 tion is open to obvious objection. We continue 

 to hear complaints of superficial thought, parrot 

 learning of cram text-books, absence of origin- 

 ality, and so forth. Surely this is largely due to 

 making lads, many of whom are not gifted lin- 

 guists, learn difficult subjects, such as science and 

 mathematics, in a language in which they cannot 

 think. Were it not that many Indians have at- 

 tained to a surprising proficiency in English, the 

 system would have been condemned long ago. In 

 the chapter on Oriental teaching Mr. Sharp con- 

 fines his remarks to education in the Indian 

 classics, and has little or nothing to say of the 

 attempts now being made to gain for the modern 

 languages of India the same facilities that Eng- 

 lish universities are now supplying for European 

 living speeches, their philology, phonology, and 

 literature. 



From the point of view of education in India, 

 war and the economies it involved came at an 



1 " seventh Quinoncnnl.il Review ofthe Prog.-ess of Fducation in India.' 

 By H. Sharp. (Kurtaii of Education, India.) Price 5J. (J. net. 



NO. 2608, VOL. 104] 



unfortunate moment, since it was necessary to 

 suspend a great part of the reforms projected in 

 Lord Hardinge's resolution of 1913. Even in that 

 circumstance, however, we may ultimately find 

 comfort, since what India chiefly needs is not 

 official erucouragement and the vicarious liber- 

 ality of Government so much as public appre- 

 ciation of what good and solid education is and 

 by what means it can be supplied to the people 

 at large. One of the most important steps in this 

 direction (less neglected than official reports seem 

 to show) is to make the greater Indian languages 

 fit vehicles for supplying instruction to immature 

 minds. In many Indian provinces non-official 

 committees and societies have carefully compiled 

 vocabularies of scientific terms. Some of these 

 seem pedantic and clumsy enough to those who 

 study Indian languages merely with a view to the 

 enjoyment of literature or the understanding of 

 local life and character. But we must not forget 

 that our own scientific nomenclature is chiefly bor- 

 rowed from dead, inflected languages, and 

 presents difficulties which, to an Indian mind, 

 would not occur in the use of similar phrases bor- 

 rowed from Sanskrit in the case of Hindu lan- 

 guages or from Arabic for Mohammedan learners 

 of science. 



On the whole, in spite of war and other lets 

 and hindrances, some permanent, some, we hope, 

 temporary, Mr. Sharp's admirably arranged and 

 verv valuable report tells us a tale of substantial 

 progress. E pur si muove ! Public expenditure 

 on education has increased by one-half in the fi\e 

 years under review. There is a steady improve- 

 ment in the number of boys and girls under in- 

 struction. Teachers are better paid, though it is 

 probable that much of their increased salaries has 

 been swallowed up by rising prices. The huge, 

 too huge, examining universities are gradually 

 being supplemented by smaller residential and 

 teaching colleges. This change implies some re- 

 cognition, on the part of Government and parents 

 alike, of the fact that education comprises a mould- 

 ing of character and will as well as the training 

 of memory, intelligence, and interest. 



It is perhaps a little surprising that Government 

 reports on education do not deal with the signifi- 

 cant results of school and university teaching as 

 these appear in vernacular literature and journal- 

 ism. Most of us in Europe have heard of Rabin- 

 dranath Tagore and one or two other contempo- 

 rary Indian authors. There are others, locally held 

 in equal, or almost equal, esteem. .A. system of 

 education which produces really fine literature, 

 much of it entailing solid research and thought in 

 history. In philosophy, and, to a growing extent, 

 in science, is probably more full of hope and 

 promise than can well be shown in an official sum- 

 mary of the educational doings of some 200 mil- 

 lions of human beings of extraordinarily various 

 degrees of social, religious, and scientific pro- 

 gress. This, of course, will be sufficiently 

 apparent to any careful and disinterested reader 

 of Mr. Sharp's admirable report. 



