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FEBRUARY, 1873.)
PYAL SCHOOLS IN MADRAS.
55
knowledge of four or five of the great classics of Writing is taught in the very best possible modethe language, and becomes perfectly able to read his in conjunction with the reading lesson. The pupil vernacular. It is not very certain that any other begins his writing lessons when he commences to system will produce much better results, except in learn his alphabet. He is spared the drudgery of the points about to be considered. In one respect the wretched system that custom makes necessary the system is better than that adopted in European in every English school, -the weeks of dreary labour schools for the poor. The classic books thus inaster- on unmeaning strokes, pot-hooks, and hangers. ed are also the moral law of the nation, and exhibit His first lesson is a complete letter, and thus he can
system of ethics of the highest character. Always feel that every day he makes real and useful excepting the Bible, I know no western book in progress. common use which can compare with the Kural, The alphabet is almost everywhere written with Auveiyar, and most of the other books so employed the finger on the sanded groupd. All future writing In fact, all observers are agreed that the Kural forms is done either in the mode described above-writthe real moral code of the country. It does noting the morrow's lesson on the palaka-or subsefall within the scope of this paper to show whether quently with the style on kaján, and in the more or how far the adult population follow the rules respectable schools with an English pen on paper. thus learnt in youth, but there can be no doubt as In connexion with this subject, another point of to the benefit that must follow such moral training. great excellence in the system of education practis
The inain evils of the system described above are ed in a Pyal school must be mentioned. It cannot two : the books read are all in the high dialect, be better introduced than in the words of Mr. Setonand hence, both in the collocation and the form Karr, the well-known civilian judge in Bengal. of the words themselves, are altogether different Referring to the Bengal Pyal schools, he says: from the language the lads must speak and hear in "These (indigenous) schools do supply a sort of their after-life. Hence their study corresponds information which ryots and villagers, who think pretty fairly with that of Latin in an English at all about learning to read and write, cannot and school. It needs no argument to prove that, will not do without. They learn there the system if the books studied were written in modern of baniya's accounts, or that of agriculturists. Tamil, the time spent in learning would be They learn forms of notes-of-hand, quittances, much more profitably employed, seeing that now leases, agreements, and all such forms as are in the lad leaves school untrained in the language constant use with a population not naturally dull which he must meet with in ordinary life, in the and somewhat prone to litigation, and whose social vernacular journals, and in all the living forms of relations are decidedly complex. All these forme modern thought. All western books that are trans- are taught by the guru from memory, as well as lated at all are rendered into the modern dialect, complimentary forms of address; and I lave heard and there ought to be no barrier to prevent any a little boy, not ten years old, run off from memory person at once appretiating them. Really effective A form of this kind with the utmost glibness. This education must march with modern language and boy, like many others, had never read from a book modern ideas.
in his life. On these acquirements the agricultural A great deal of time is also lost, seeing that it is population set a very considerable value. It is the impossible for a child to make such progress in a absence of such instructions as this which, I think. dead language as he could in a living one. In has led to the assertion, with regard to some districts, studying the Kural, for example, more time is given that the inhabitants consider their own indigenous to the commentary than to the text, because, with- schools to be better than those of Government. out the former, the latter is obscure. The result is | I would have all forms of address and of business, much the same as if, in English schools, the reading | all modes of account, agricultural and commercial, lessons were always in Ortulum or the Saxon collected, and the best of their kind printed in Chronicle.
cheap and popular forin, to serve as models. I A third evil lies in the fact that the system almost would even have the common summons of our precludes simultaneous or class teaching, and this is criminal or revenue courts printed off." a necessary element of rapid progress. It should I Much the same mode is followed in Madras. In not be forgotten, however, that the individual
addition to the regular teaching thus referred to teaching now given effectually prevents that resi- it is common bere for the teacher to borrow from duum of confirmed idlers, and therefore ignorant his friends all the up-country letters he can hear lads, which is the one drawback of the system of of. These are carried to the school, read, copied, class teaching in ordinary hands. The Pyal modo studied, and explained. Reading them is no easy turns out every pupil a fair scholar - though at a matter. The vernacular current band is as different great waste of labour. The class system ensures a from the printed character as German hand-writing fnuch higher average, but permite confirmed from the Roman type of books. English influence dullards.
has been steadily exercised against this current I have referred at this length to reading, because band, and in many districts it is passing away this subject is the key of the whole system, and superseded by the printing character. It is doubt the other lessons will not require much attention. ful whether this is an advantage, as we may consider
