rther primary education, the
wisest course would be to improve the quality rather than the quantity,
and, most of all, the quality of the teachers. Here, again, uniformity
should be avoided rather than ensued. No primary curriculum can be
evolved which will meet the needs alike of the rural population and of
the townsfolk, or of the different parts of India with their varying
conditions of climate and temperament. Even more than with regard to
secondary schools, the needs of parents must be consulted, and the
greatest latitude given to provincial Governments to vary the system in
a practical spirit and in accordance with local requirements. Nor can
the opinion, strongly held by many parents, be overlooked that religious
instruction cannot be safely excluded from the training of such young
children. Some of the objects to be kept specially in view have been
well stated by Mr. Orange, the Director-General of Public Education:--

We desire to see, if not in every village, within reach of
every village, a school, not an exotic, but a village school,
in which the village itself can take pride, and of which the
first purpose will be to train up good men and women and good
citizens; and the second; to impart useful knowledge, not
forgetting while doing so to train the eye and the hand so
that the children when they leave school, whether for the
field or the workshop, will have begun to learn the value of
accurate observation and to feel the joy of intelligent and
exact manual work.

This is undoubtedly the goal towards which primary education should be
directed, but it can only be reached by steady and continuous effort
spread over a long term of years. Otherwise we shall discover, again too
late, that, as in the case of secondary education, most haste is worst
speed.

I shall not attempt to deal with the question of female education,
either primary or secondary, for it is so intimately bound up with the
peculiarities of Indian, and especially Hindu, society, that it would be
difficult for the State to take any vigorous initiative without running
a great risk of alarming and alienating native opinion[21]. Owing to
Indian social customs and to the practice of early marriage or at least
of early seclusion, for girls, their education presents immense
practical difficulties which do not exist in the case of boys. Hence the
slow progress it has made. At the last census only eight per thousand
women