the juvenile population of this country because the usual age for
going to school is from five to six, and the usual age for leaving
school is from ten to twelve instead of fourteen. There are thus
two sources of discrepancy. The school-going age is shorter in
India than in Prussia, which must have the effect of diminishing
the total number of school-going children; while on the other
hand, that diminished number is not exposed to the causes of
mortality to which the total school-going population of Prussia is
liable from the age of twelve to fourteen. In want of more precise
data, let us suppose that these two contrary discrepancies bal-
ance each other, and we shall then be at liberty to apply the
Prussian proportions to this country. Taking, therefore, eleven-
thirtieths of the above-mentioned 400 persons, and three-
sevenths of the result, it will follow that in Bengal and Bihar
there is on an average a village school for every sixty-three
children of the school-going age. These children, however,
include girls as well as boys, and as there are no indigenous
girls’ schools, if we take the male and female children to be in
equal or nearly equal proportions, there will appear to be an
indigenous elementary school for every thirty-one or thirty-two
boys. The estimate of 100,000 such schools in Bengal and Bihar
is confirmed by a consideration of the number of villages in
those two Provinces. Their number has been officially estimated
at 150,748 of which, not all, but most have each a school. If it be
admitted that there is so large a proportion as a third of the
villages that have no schools, there will still be 100,000 that
have them. Let it be admitted that these calculations from
uncertain premises are only distant approximations to the truth,
and it will still appear that the system of village schools is
extensively prevalent; that the desire to give education to their
male children must be deeply seated in the minds of parents
even of the humblest classes; and that these are the institutions,
closely interwoven as they are with the habits of the people and
the customs of the country, through which primarily, although
not exclusively, we may hope to improve the morals and intellect
of the native population.
It is not, however, in the present state of these schools,
that they can be regarded as valuable instruments for this
purpose. The benefits resulting from them are but small, owing
partly to the incompetency of the instructors, and partly to the
early age at which through the poverty of the parents the
children are removed. The education of Bengalee children, as
has been just stated, generally commences when they are five or
six years old and terminates in five years, before the mind can be
fully awakened to a sense of the advantages of knowledge or the
reason