SOME MEASURES OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM.
Though already in 1889, when Lord Lansdowne was Viceroy, an important
resolution, drafted by Sir Anthony (now Lord) MacDonnell as Secretary to
Government, was issued, drawing attention to some of the most glaring
defects of our educational system from the point of view of intellectual
training and of discipline, and containing valuable recommendations for
remedying them, it seems to have had very little practical effect. A
more fruitful attempt to deal with the question was made during Lord
Curzon's Viceroyalty. He summoned and presided over an Educational
Conference, of which the results were embodied in a Government
Resolution issued on March 11, 1904, and in the Universities Act of the
same year. They were received at the time with a violent outburst of
indignation by Indian politicians, who claim to represent the educated
intellect of the country. The least that Lord Curzon was charged with
was a deliberate attempt to throttle higher education in India. This
factious outcry has now died away, except amongst the irreconcilables,
and Dr. Ashutosh Mookerjee, an authority whom even Hindu partisanship
can hardly repudiate, declared in his last Convocation speech that the
new regulations which are now being brought into operation, far from
bearing out the apprehensions of "alarmist prophets," have been
distinctly beneficial to the better and stronger class of students.
To summarize very briefly the work of the Conference, it recognized in
the first place the importance of the vernaculars as the proper medium
for instruction in the lower stages of education, whilst maintaining the
supremacy of English in the higher stages. It sought to give a more
practical character to high-school training by promoting the "modern
side," hitherto overshadowed by a mainly literary curriculum, and it
endeavoured to make the school courses self-sufficing and self-contained
instead of merely a stepping-stone to the University courses. To this
end secondary schools were encouraged to give more importance to School
Final Examinations as a general test of proficiency and not to regard
their courses as almost exclusively preparatory to the University
Entrance Examination. Great stress was also laid upon the improvement of
training colleges for teachers as well as upon the development of
special schools for industrial, commercial, and agricultural
instruction. Nor were the ethics of education, altogether forgotten in
their bearings upon the maintenance of healthy discipline. Government
emphasized the great importance of a large extension of the system of
hostels or boarding-houses, under proper supervision, in connexion with
colleges and secondary schools, as a protection against the moral
dangers of life in large towns; and whilst provision was made for the
more rigorous inspection of schools to test their qualifications both
for Government grants-in-aid and for affiliation to Universities,
certain reforms were also introduced into the constitution and
management of the Universities themselves.
The results already achieved are not inconsiderable. The provision of
hostels, in which Lord Curzon was deeply interested, has made great
progress, and one may hope that the conditions of student life described
by Dr. Garfield Williams in Calcutta are typical of a state of things
already doomed to disappear, though at the present rate of progress it
can only disappear very slowly. In Madras there is a fine building for
the Presidency College students and also for those of the Madras
Christian College. In Bombay Government are giving money for the
extension of the boarding accommodation of the three chief colleges. In
Allahabad, Agra, Lucknow, Meerut, Bareilly, Lahore, and many other
centres old residential buildings are being extended or new ones
erected. The new Dacca College, in the capital of Eastern Bengal, is one
of the most conspicuous and noteworthy results of the Partition. In
Calcutta itself little has been done except in the missionary
institutions; and it is certainly very discouraging to note that an
excellent and very urgent scheme for removing the Presidency College,
the premier college of Bengal, from the slums in which it is at present
in every way most injuriously confined, to a healthy suburban site has
been shelved by the Bengal Government partly under financial pressure
and partly because of the lukewarmness of native opinion. What is no
doubt really wanted is the wholesale removal of all the Colleges
connected with the Calcutta University altogether from their present
surroundings, but to refuse to make a beginning with the Presidency
College is merely to prove once more that _le mieux est l'ennemi du
bien_.
In regard to the University Entrance Examinations, the latest Madras
returns, which were alone sufficiently complete to illustrate the effect
of the new regulations, showed that the increased stringency of the
tests had resulted in a healthy decrease in the number of
matriculations, whilst the standard had been materially raised. In
Calcutta the University inspection of schools and colleges and the
exercise by the Universities of their discretionary powers in matters of
affiliation have grown much more effective. That the powers of the
University Senates have not been unduly curtailed is only too clearly
shown on the other hand by the effective resistance hitherto offered at
Bombay to the scheme of reforms proposed by Sir George Clarke. To the
most important features of the scheme, which were the provision of a
course of practical science for all first-year students, a systematic
bifurcation of courses, the lightening of the number of subjects in
order to secure somewhat more thoroughness, and compulsory teaching of
Indian history and polity, no serious objection could be raised, but the
politicians on the Senate effectively blocked discussion.
A great deal still remains to be done, and can be done, on the lines of
the resolution of 1904. The speed at which it can be done must, no
doubt, be governed in some directions by financial considerations. The
extension of the hostel system, for instance, which is indispensable to
the removal of some of the worst moral and physical influences upon
education, is largely a matter of money. So is too to some extent the
strengthening of the educational staff, European and native, which is
also urgently needed. The best Indians cannot be attracted unless they
are offered a living wage in some measure consonant with the dignity of
so important a profession, and our schools and colleges will continue to
be too often nursery grounds of sedition so long as we do not redress
the legitimate grievances of teachers on starvation wages. But though
improved prospects may attract better men in the future, the actual
inefficiency of a huge army of native teachers, far too hastily
recruited and imperfectly trained, can at best be but slowly mended. We
want more and better training colleges for native teachers, but that is
not all. The great Mahomedan College at Aligarh, one of the best
educational institutions in India, partly because it is wholly
residential, has obtained excellent results by sending some of its
students who intend to return as teachers to study Western educational
methods in Europe after they have completed their course in India. The
same practice might be extended elsewhere.
To raise the standard of the Europeans in the Educational Service
something more than a mere improvement of material conditions is
required. Additions are being made to both the teaching and the
inspecting staff. But what is above all needed is to get men to join who
regard teaching not merely as a livelihood, but as a vocation, and to
inform them with a better understanding both of the people whose
children they have to train and of the character and methods of the
Government they have to serve. This can hardly be done except by
associating the Educational Service much more closely with what are now
regarded as the higher branches of the public service in India. No
Englishmen are in closer touch with the realities of Indian life than
Indian civilians, and means must be found to break down the wall which
now rigidly separates the Educational Service from the Civil Service.
Opportunities might usefully be given to young Englishmen when they
first join the Educational Service in India to acquire a more intimate
knowledge of Indian administrative work, as well as of the character and
customs and language of the people amongst whom their lot is to be cast,
by serving an apprenticeship with civilians in the _mofussil_. The
appointment of such a very able civilian as Mr. Harcourt Butler to be
the first Minister of Education in India may be taken as an indication
that Lord Morley realizes the importance of rescuing the Educational
Service from the watertight compartment in which it has hitherto been
much too closely confined. We can hardly hope to restore English
influence over education to the position which it originally occupied.
There are 1,200 high schools for boys in India to-day, of which only
220 are under public management, and, even for the latter, it would be
difficult to provide an English headmaster apiece. What we can do is to
follow up the policy which has been lately resumed of increasing the
number of high schools under Government control, until we have at least
one in every district, and in every large centre one with an English
headmaster which should be the model school for the division.
A much vexed question is whether it is impossible to raise the fees
charged for higher education with a view to checking the wastage which
results from the introduction into our schools and colleges of so much
unsuitable raw material. The fees now charged for the University course
are admittedly very low, even for Indian standards. The total cost of
maintaining an Indian student throughout his four years' college course
ranges from a _minimum_ of £40 to a _maximum_ of £110--i.e., from £10
to £27 10s. per annum. The actual fees for tuition vary from three to
twelve rupees (4s. to 16s.) a month in different colleges. Very large
contributions, amounting roughly to double the total aggregate of fees,
have therefore to be made from public funds towards the cost of
collegiate education. Is it fair to throw so heavy a burden on the
Indian taxpayer for the benefit of a very small section of the
population amongst whom, moreover, many must be able to afford the
whole, or at least a larger proportion, of the cost of their children's
education? Is it wise by making higher instruction so cheap to tempt
parents to educate children often of poor or mediocre abilities out of
their own plane of life? Would it not be better at any rate to raise the
fees generally and to devote the sums yielded by such increase to
exhibitions and scholarships for the benefit of the few amongst the
humbler classes who show exceptional promise?
Against this it is urged that it would be entirely at variance with
Indian traditions to associate standards of knowledge with standards of
wealth, and, in practice, education has, I understand, been found to be
worst where the fees bear the greatest proportion to the total
expenditure. The same arguments equally apply for and against raising
the fees in secondary schools. In regard to the latter, however, the
opponents of any general increase of fees make, nevertheless, a
suggestion which deserves consideration. In many schools the fees begin
at a very low figure--eight annas (8d.) a month in the lowest forms and
rise to three, four, and even five rupees (4s. 5s. 4d. and 6s. 8d.) a
month in the highest forms. It is this initial cheapness which induces
so many thoughtless parents to send their boys to secondary schools
without having considered whether they can afford to keep them through
the whole course, whilst it fosters the notion that badly paid and badly
qualified teachers are good enough for the early, which are often the
most important, stages, of a boy's education. To obviate these evils it
is suggested that the fees for all forms should be equalized.
I shall have occasion later on to point out the immense importance of
giving greater encouragement to scientific and technical education.
Government service and the liberal professions are already overstocked,
and it is absolutely necessary to check the tendency of young Indians to
go in for a merely literary education for which, even if it were more
thorough than it can be under existing conditions, there is no longer
any sufficient outlet. The demand which is arising all over India for
commercial and industrial development should afford an unrivalled
opportunity of deflecting education into more useful and practical
channels.
Some better machinery than exists at present seems also to be required
to bring the Educational Service into touch with parents. Education can
nowhere be a question of mere pedagogics, and least of all in India. Yet
there is evidently a strong tendency to treat it as such. To take only
one instance, the tasks imposed upon schoolboys and students by the
exigencies of an elaborate curriculum are often excessive, and there
have been cases when the intervention of other authorities has been
necessary to bring the education officers to listen to the reasonable
grievances of parents. If in these and other matters parents were more
freely consulted, they would probably be more disposed to give education
officers the support of their parental authority. There are many points
upon which native opinion would not be so easily misled by
irreconcilable politicians if greater trouble were taken to explain the
questions at issue.
What is evidently much wanted is greater elasticity. In a country like
India, which is an aggregation of many widely different countries, the
needs and the wishes of the people must differ very widely and cannot be
met by cast-iron regulations, however admirable in theory. It is
earnestly to be hoped that the creation of a separate portfolio in the
Government of India will not involve the strengthening of the
centralizing tendencies which have been the bane of Indian education
since the days of Macaulay, himself one of the greatest theorists that
ever lived. We cannot afford to relax the very little control we
exercise over education, but education is just one of the matters in
which Provincial Governments should be trusted to ascertain, and to give
effect to, the local requirements of the people. In another direction,
however, the creation of a Ministry for Education should be all to the
good. If any real and comprehensive improvements are to be carried out
they will cost a great deal of money, and in the ordinary sense of the
term it will not be reproductive expenditure, though no expenditure, if
wisely applied, can yield more valuable results. As a member of
Council--i.e., as a member of the Government of India--Mr. Butler must
carry much greater weight in recommending the necessary expenditure than
a Director-General of Public Education or than a Provincial Governor,
especially as the expenditure will probably have to be defrayed largely
out of Imperial and not merely out of Provincial funds. If the
educational problem is the most vital and the most urgent one of all at
the present hour in India, it stands to reason that no more disastrous
blunder could be made than to stint the new department created for its
solution.