305 



Native Education. 



[April 



" The attempts hitherto made at the improvement of public 

 instruction, the most interesting, if not the most important, 

 department under our charge, exhibit so lamentable a con- 

 trast with the success attending the other branches of the in- 

 stitution, and with the great progess made in the improve- 

 ment of native education at the two sister Presidencies, that 

 I consider the honour of the service seriously implicated in 

 our redeeming from censure and reproach the public body to 

 which we belong, by placing this branch of the institution 

 under us in an acknowledged state of more progressive ad- 

 vancement. 



* * * * * * 



" The exertions of the Board in this department have hither- 

 to been directed — 1st, to the establishment at the Presidency, 

 of a central seminary, for the proper instruction of paid can- 

 didates, entertained for the situation of Collectorate teach- 

 ers at the principal schools to be established in the inte- 

 rior of the country — 2dly, to the actual introduction, under 

 these persons, of some of these principal or Collectorate 

 schools into the provinces — 3dly, to the establishment of 

 subordinate or Tahsildary schools there- — and, 4thly, to 

 the composition of improved elementary works on the na- 

 tive languages, with the view of rendering the general system 

 of instruction more consecutive in its stages ; and to the dis- 

 tribution of approved English and other works throughout 

 the country, in communication with the School Book Society. 

 Reversing the order in which these have been stated, I 

 proceed to oifer to the consideration of my colleagues a few 

 observations upon each. 



" As explained in a report which I laid before Government 

 when collector of Bellary, the grand defect in the education 

 of the natives throughout the South of India is, that whilst 

 they learn to write and to read mechanically, the intellect is 

 restrained from the exercise of its natural powers, and the 

 heart deprived of those all important moral impressions, 

 which can be fixed indelibly only in youth, merely in conse- 

 quence of every school-book used being in a dialect of which 

 the learner is profoundly ignorant. This is the case not 

 only in all the Hindoo schools as there explained, but in the 



