at the origin of the system, have proved insurmountable hindrances to the formation of these classes in the great majority of instances."* Mr. Woodrow says: "It is the genius of the Hindoos to obtain great results by apparently inadequate means. No person watches the Dacca weavers or goldsmiths, or shell workers without astonishment. The loom, from which the most beautiful patterns woven in transparent muslin are produced, appears to European eyes a ricketty frame of bamboo splints. Again the traveller is daily surprised by his cook at feats of success under difficulties. He has the French skill in contriving a meal out of most scanty materials, and far more than French skill in the matter of fire and cooking pots. From these and such like indications, I believe that our Schools will produce good results with very imperfect apparatus."+ It is desirable, however, to supply a few articles not procurable in the mofussil. The set for village schools need not cost more than five or ten rupees; double that sum might suffice for a town vernacular school. Pictures would partially supply the want of the more expensive apparatus, and be useful in many ways. As already stated, the great object in the school course is scientific information; in the university course, scientific training. In the latter, students should be restricted to one or two subjects at a time, which could be fully illustrated by the apparatus with which most of the colleges are supplied. It will be seen from the foregoing remarks that while Natural Science is proposed to be taught in all schools, arrangements are such that they can be carried out without difficulty, and the study will not interfere with other important branches. Men of the old school will reiterate the objection that only a mere smattering of knowledge can be acquired in this way. But as Mill remarks: "It should be our aim in learning, not merely to know the one thing which is to be our principal occupation, as well as it can be known, but to do this and also to know something of all the great subjects of human interest: taking care to know that something accurately; marking well the dividing line between what we know accurately and what we do not: and remembering that our object should be to obtain a true view of nature and life in their broad outline, and that it is idle to throw away time upon the details of any thing which is to form no part of the occupation of our practical energies." It is a sufficient answer to all gainsayers that the course proposed is that recommended by the most distinguished scientific men in Britain, who have themselves tested its working in ordinary schools. *Report of Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction, p. xxii. Literature. While the claims of science have been specially urged on account of its neglect in India, the great importance of Literature is fully admitted. It has been proposed that three hours a week should be devoted to science; literature and kindred subjects should receive five hours a week. Laurie urges that the training of the imagination should receive much attention in lower class schools : "If this careful regard to the imagination of the young be obligatory on the instructors of children of all classes, how much more is it incumbent on the teacher of the children of the poor? Divorced as they are by poverty, and the want of sympathetic response in their elders, from the pictures, fables, poems, and narratives which surround, in lavish profusion, the children of the middle and upper classes, they have but the one chance which the day school affords of obtaining food for the starved imagination. Nor will the teacher err, if, departing from his book, which, if justice is done to other subjects, can yield but a limited supply of such material, he introduces tales into the schoolroom, to be read as rewards of good conduct. The time so occupied will assuredly not be wasted for apart from the indirect moral instruction which he will thus convey through the imagination, he will shed sunlight and warmth on the tender mind, without which a general and healthy growth is impossible."* Tate remarks: "Fables and simple tales are amongst the best means of cultivating the imagination of children. Some little stories contain in an unobtrusive form, more practical wisdom than many learned homilies. Nothing affords children a more sparkling entertainment, than to listen to the parley between the lion and the ass, or between the fox and the crow; while each of them adheres to its character with dramatic strictness, each, at the same time, personates some moral quality. The perception of this analogy leads, in the most pleasurable manner, to the cultivation of abstraction and reason."+ Indian literature will yield a variety of fables and tales, though care will be necessary to exclude all of an objectionable tendency. It will be shown under other heads how geography and history may be employed, among other purposes, to cultivate the conceptive faculty. Descriptions of manners and customs, adventures by sea and land, biographical sketches, &c., may all be turned to account. Poetry is of very great value in many respects. It will be noticed under another head. Willm says, "The ancient Greeks united with the culture of the just, that of the beautiful; and indeed education is incom *Primary Education, p. 69. Philosophy of Education, pp. 206, 207, (condensed). plete, if it is not aesthetic, as well as intellectual, moral, and religious." He adds: "The sentiment of the beautiful, like disinterested love, is one of the dispositions of humanity which attest its noble origin; and its development, by ennobling the inclinations and activity of man, necessarily tends to confirm the empire of his spiritual over his animal nature. To cherish and cultivate it, is to nourish and assist the inward man, the true man, and consequently, to add to his true felicity." With regard to the extent to which the cultivation of this sentiment is practicable in elementary schools, he says: "I ask only that the sentiment of the beautiful and of suitableness should be a little more developed in children, that their eyes should be opened to the theatre of nature, and that they should be taught to admire its wonders. "Who has not been struck, when in the country, with the indifference displayed by most of the inhabitants to the beauties surrounding them? This indifference does not proceed from want of leisure to contemplate them, nor from being accustomed to live in the midst of them, but principally from want of education, because the sense of the beautiful has not been awakened in their minds."* The works of Ruskin show what pleasure may be derived from contemplating the beautiful in nature. Moral Instruction. Limits. This is a subject of very great delicacy from the close connection between morality and religion. In the following remarks, the writer seeks only to carry out principles which have hitherto been acted upon in Government Education. He advocates only the teaching already to be found in the publications of the Calcutta School-Book Society, in Mr. Howard's Series; in the school books compiled by Babu Peary Churn Sircar, of Presidency College, by Babu Gopal Chandra Bandyapadhyay, Head Master of the Calcutta Government Normal School, and others. He simply seeks to impart the instruction more systematically, and with greater adaptation to the circumstances of the people than is possible with mere extracts from English books. On the other hand, he deprecates most strongly any change in another direction-ceasing to teach the grand old truths which have been acknowledged for thousands of years, and substituting for them Mr. Holyoake's new gospel of secularism. Such a course would be opposed to the religious spirit which characterises the people of India, and be a disgrace to the British Government. Education of the People, pp. 103, 104. Need of Adaptation.-To raise the moral character is at once the most important and the most difficult function of education. The measures to be employed must be as carefully adapted to the end in view as the medicines prescribed for a patient labouring under a complication of dangerous maladies. No hap-hazard remedies will suffice. The people of India have some excellent points of character and they have their failings. Their moral training demands special attention at present, for they are in danger of losing some of their former good qualities and acquiring new vices. In drawing up a course of practical ethics, it should be carefully considered, what are the dangers to which pupils in Government schools are specially exposed? What are the virtues Moral instruction which require to be specially inculcated? should be adapted accordingly. Every lesson should form part of a carefully arranged plan, and each point should receive attention in proportion to its importance in the particular case. Currie well observes: "Much of the moral instruction, so called, given in school, runs to waste from its want of adaptation. The teacher must instruct by examples and cases of conduct which they can apprehend from their own experience." Hence books containing moral instruction should be specially prepared for India. Basis. It is of very great importance that moral instruction should rest on a sound basis. It has been well observed :— "The term utility cannot be said to convey with it the idea of obligation at all." Jouffroy.... In Scripture* actions are enjoined because they are right, and because it is the will of God that we do them. The beneficial consequences which flow from right actions are held out as motives or inducements to comply with the will of God. But these consequences are never spoken of in Scripture as constituting the actions right, nor as forming the ground of our obligation to do them."..." "To do what is Right even for the sake of everlasting life, is evidently acting from a motive far inferior, in purity and power, to love and veneration for the character and command of Him who is Just and Good, in a sense and to an extent to which our most elevated conceptions are inadequate."+ Still, the natural consequences of misconduct may be appealed to as a powerful subsidiary motive. Currie says: "The child's intelligence is first enlisted in the cause of virtue by explaining to him the natural consequences of actions. This may be + The statutes of the Lord are right." Psalms xix. 8. done with best effect at the moment he has exposed himself to feel them; for example, if he has been guilty of untruth, we are constrained to suspect and disbelieve him for a time, and this will wound him : if he has acted dishonestly, we are constrained to withdraw from him some little responsibility, and thus show that our confidence in him is shaken; or, if he has uttered naughty words, we may decline his company when next he offers it, and let him feel the uneasiness of isolation. The experience of those consequences will quicken his understanding of the nature of the acts, and it is then that we should point out that our displeasure is exhibited, not from caprice or the sake of giving pain, but from a sense of duty. In a similar way, should his attention be directed to the nature of good actions, in connexion with the reward of confidence and regard which they naturally lead to."* Such teaching alone, however, is defective. Dr. Duff remarks of a book much studied in the indigenous schools of Bengal, "Even its best parts can scarcely be said to rise beyond the inculcation of a secular sort of prudence." This applies to some English books on morals. Indirect and Direct Instruction.-The differences between these is thus explained by Laurie: "There are two kinds of preceptive teaching, the Suggestive and the Direct. The suggestive is the more efficacious, because it is associated with a concrete example. In the doing of right acts, the child is presumed to be supported by the example of his teacher and fellows. By sharing the moral life exhibited daily in the school he gradually be comes a constituent part of it: it is the example of those around him that points both the moral and the way. This is true of the indirect moral instruction of discipline: it is equally necessary that the direct moral instruction of the school, in so far as it is conveyed by books or conversation, should be in the earlier years as much as possible the instruction which the example of others gives, that is to say, the instruction of biography, fable, and anecdote. The lessons of fair play and peaceableness, for example, almost defy abstract preceptive teaching in the case of the very young, but enter widely and graphically into the mind through the story of the two boys and the nut, which ends in the arbiter eating the kernel and liberally dispensing half a shell to each of the little disputants. Next to seeing a good example before us is imagining that we see it, and this we do when we read or hear of it. Direct Precept, if less important than Suggestive, has yet a useful part to play. It is true that all moral precepts are cases of conduct generalized from particular acts and their consequences, and therefore that to demand of a child that he shall strain his intellect to grasp fully a moral generalization is to demand an impossibility....But, true as this is, the moral generalization is not wholly valueless to the child, although not fully intelligible at the time of its being imparted. He himself is, by the very instincts of his nature and the necessities of his * Principles of Education, p. 24 |