d this pitch, that our educational system is
now turning out year by year a semi-educated proletariat which is not
only unemployed, but in many cases almost unemployable. A Hindu
gentleman who is one of the highest authorities on education told me
that in Bengal, where this evil has reached the most serious dimensions,
he estimates the number of these unemployed at over 40,000. This is an
evil which no change in the relative number of Europeans and natives
employed in Government and other services could materially affect. Even
if every Englishman left India, it would present just as grave a problem
to the rulers of the country, except that the bitterness engendered
would not be able to vent itself, as it too often does now, on the alien
rulers who have imported the alien system of education by which many of
those who fail believe themselves to have been cruelly duped.

Similar causes have operated to produce discontent amongst the teachers,
who in turn inoculate their pupils with the virus of disaffection. It
was much easier to multiply schools and colleges than to train a
competent teaching staff. Official reports seldom care to look
unpleasant facts in the face, and the periodical reports both of the
Imperial Department of Public Education and of the Provincial
Departments have always been inclined to lay more stress upon the
multiplication of educational institutions and the growth in the numbers
of pupils and students than upon the weak points of the system.
Nevertheless, there is one unsatisfactory feature that the most
confirmed optimists cannot ignore. Hardly a single one of these reports
but makes some reference to the deficiencies and incapacity of the
native teaching staff. The last quinquennial report issued by Mr.
Orange, the able Director-General of Public Education, who is now
leaving India, contains a terse but very significant passage. "Speaking
generally," he writes, "it may be said that the qualifications and the
pay of the teachers in secondary schools are below any standard that
could be thought reasonable; and the inquiries which are now being made
into the subject have revealed a state of things that is scandalous in
Bengal and Eastern Bengal, and is unsatisfactory in every province."
Very little information is forthcoming as to the actual qualifications
or pay of the teachers. It appears, however, from the inspection of high
schools by the Calcutta University that out of one group of 3,054
teacher