I THE NEED FOR A REVIEW THE recent formation of a separate branch of the Home Department of the Government of India to deal specially with education, has given new life to the contention that an entirely new departure is required in our system of education, and in Government policy in regard to it. The contention is not new, it is as old as the endeavour to educate at all in British India; for there were always two parties. It has been gaining strength and insistence for some years past; and the last four years with their painful record of murderous conspiracy and desperate outrage have added to the argument the coercive force of things done and suffered, so that it is not surprising, if any who knew educational work in India only by these supposed results, look askance at education itself. The expectation that Government intends on the inauguration of the new department not only to undertake large schemes for the co-ordination and extension of education but to initiate a fundamental change in educational policy, shows that we are, or may be, once more at a dividing of the ways. It is scarcely possible to overestimate the gravity of such a crisis. To comprehend the full significance of such a new departure as this expectation indicates, it is necessary to pause and look back; to turn away from the present results of three-quarters of a century of strenuous effort over the building up of an educational system, and go back to the beginning with a mind as open as possible to impartial judgment; to see what was the existing state of things when the obligation to educate was first spoken of; to see why in India it was spoken of at all as a concern for Government; why this was attempted and not that, and how step by step we have come to what we all see and many deplore, at the present time. We shall then be in a position to say with some assurance (for we must inevitably carry into our retrospect the knowledge and foresight which the present gives) whether mistakes have been made, and where, and when, and so come with greater sureness to a consideration of how at this date to rectify what has been done wrongly. Without such preliminary discipline we are only too likely to blunder out of one error into another and add to folly, if folly there has been, too precipitate a repentance. It will be for some of us a dismal result, if we have to confess that we have been wrong from the beginning; that we never should have attempted to introduce into India knowledge, as knowledge has been understood in Europe since the time of Descartes and Bacon; that we never should have founded universities; never have encouraged the study of English literature and European science; that we should have held fast to traditional learning and preCopernical science, and have based any more popular education which there was scope for strictly on the vernaculars; that it was bad policy, and folly little short of a crime, to introduce the races and peoples of Hindustan to the heights and depths of Western speculation, and to the principles that underlie discovery in natural science. It will be a dismal result: but if it is true, the conclusion must be faced practically, and all well-wishers of education must join the Government of India (if the decision of the Government of India is to lead the way in such reform) in retracing the steps that have been wrongly taken and in laying anew the foundations that have been falsely laid. A dismal result, certainly, after some four score years of misdirected effort, if such the conclusion must be. But if it falls out otherwise and for the purposes of this inquiry at least judgment must be suspended-then it may be agreed that no such retrieving of past errors is called for, but rather we may go on with fresh courage in the endeavour to bring a little nearer accomplishment work begun with honest purpose, and carried on at a great cost of labour and expense. One or other of these conclusions must follow such an historical and critical inquiry as is here proposed, and, whichever conclusion is reached, if any assurance of truth can be reached in a matter of so much intricacy and uncertainty, it must be accepted and followed as a guide. Two things will, I think, be allowed by all who have given consideration to this question, that, firstly, it is of boundless importance what direction is given to educational policy at the present time; secondly, that we should accept the arbitrament of facts and reason, and maintain or change the system, according as a fair review of the whole problem shows one or other to be justified. That the latter alternative needs to be very seriously taken account of must be admitted, when, not to speak of the gathering volume of criticism in India, so friendly and disinterested an observer from overseas as Sir Henry Craik is found endorsing without hesitation the opinion that educational work in India is in its main lines hopelessly wrong.1 I propose, then, in a series of papers to consider, first, the state of education and learning in India at the time when the movement began, of which the existing Sir Henry Craik, "Impressions of India" (Macmillan, 1908), p. 199; cf. pp. 203, 204. educational system is the outcome; next, the first stirrings of the new movement for education. On this it follows to examine in order the successive turningpoints in the development of the system; the definite adoption of English as the instrument of higher instruction; the formation of education departments; the foundation of universities; the Commission of 1882 together with the great expansion of collegiate education between 1880 and 1900. The growing distrust of the results of this expansion must then be traced till it culminates in the reform of the universities in 1906. This done, it will be well to take up the inquiry on the political side with a view to determining with exactitude the relation of the political to the educational movement; the aspirations of the educated classes must be fairly weighed and estimated, and those that are legitimate distinguished from those that must be summarily condemned the tendency to resort to violence in furtherance of revolutionary aims must be faced, and the question must be answered whether this tendency is strengthened or opposed by educational influences. Finally, it should be possible to gauge how far the declared educational policy of the present time accords with the conclusions reached and whether any decisive change of aim is called for. It may confidently be expected that some advantage must result from such a careful and dispassionate examination of the course of educational progress in India. The random judgments of the market-place cannot be trusted. Misconceptions arise from want of information and from want of reflection. There is much current ignorance and much confusion of thought on this subject of education. If the facts of its history can be brought into clearer light, and if more deliberate and more Ր tive thinking is given to them, the |