Indian Unrest

by Sir Valentine Chirol

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.