5,Inverness Gardens,W.8.
2 December 1931Dear Mr Thompson,
My apologies for not having acknowledged your kind letter
of November 23rd with its references earlier. I was familiar with
Adam’s Reports and Leitner, and with Howell from quotations. I
have looked at Keay, and I’m afraid he doesn’t impress me. I will
ask F.W. Thomas what he thinks of the book, but it all seems to
me second-hand.
After going through your reference I am still in doubt as to
whether the statement on p.255 of the ‘Reconstruction of India’
‘Nevertheless there was more literacy if of a low kind, than until
the last ten years’ is justifiable. You mention figures for Bombay
schools and Bengal schools. But from my experience of Indian
schools it is a far cry from attendance to literacy.
In the ten years 1917-27 with an increased enrolment of
nearly 370,000 pupils in Bengal, the number in Class IV, where
first you may expect permanent literacy, declined by 30,000.
(See EDn Comtee of Simon Commission Report, p.59, including
Table xxxiv).
I imagine from my reading of Adam, and Howell and
Leitner—all pressing the claims of indigenous education—that
this kind of thing is not new.
Did you notice in Long’s edition of Adam p.268 a quotation
from a report of Mountstuart Elphinstone dated 25 October
1819 in which he says:
‘There are already schools (in the Deccan) in all towns and
in many villages, but reading is confined to Brahmans, Banyans,
and such of the agricultural classes as have to do with
accounts.’
And Howell, p.7, in referring to Adam’s estimate that there
were 100,000 schools in Bengal in 1835 and similar estimates in
Madras and Bombay says ‘although all authorities were agreed
that the existence of these schools was a satisfactory evidence of
a general desire for education, there was equal unanimity that
the instruction actually imparted in them was, owing partly to
the utter incompetence of the teachers, the absence of all school
books and appliances, and the early age at which the children
were withdrawn, almost worthless.’
All the people I have quoted wanted Government to build
up a system on the basis of the village schools.