on
education, is largely a matter of money. So is too to some extent the
strengthening of the educational staff, European and native, which is
also urgently needed. The best Indians cannot be attracted unless they
are offered a living wage in some measure consonant with the dignity of
so important a profession, and our schools and colleges will continue to
be too often nursery grounds of sedition so long as we do not redress
the legitimate grievances of teachers on starvation wages. But though
improved prospects may attract better men in the future, the actual
inefficiency of a huge army of native teachers, far too hastily
recruited and imperfectly trained, can at best be but slowly mended. We
want more and better training colleges for native teachers, but that is
not all. The great Mahomedan College at Aligarh, one of the best
educational institutions in India, partly because it is wholly
residential, has obtained excellent results by sending some of its
students who intend to return as teachers to study Western educational
methods in Europe after they have completed their course in India. The
same practice might be extended elsewhere.

To raise the standard of the Europeans in the Educational Service
something more than a mere improvement of material conditions is
required. Additions are being made to both the teaching and the
inspecting staff. But what is above all needed is to get men to join who
regard teaching not merely as a livelihood, but as a vocation, and to
inform them with a better understanding both of the people whose
children they have to train and of the character and methods of the
Government they have to serve. This can hardly be done except by
associating the Educational Service much more closely with what are now
regarded as the higher branches of the public service in India. No
Englishmen are in closer touch with the realities of Indian life than
Indian civilians, and means must be found to break down the wall which
now rigidly separates the Educational Service from the Civil Service.
Opportunities might usefully be given to young Englishmen when they
first join the Educational Service in India to acquire a more intimate
knowledge of Indian administrative work, as well as of the character and
customs and language of the people amongst whom their lot is to be cast,
by serving an apprenticeship with civilians in the _mofussil_. The
appointment of such a very able civilian as Mr. Harcourt Butler to be