Bengal--i.e., in the province where our educational system has
displayed its gravest shortcomings.

From that time forward the dominant influence in secondary schools and
colleges drifted steadily and rapidly out of the hands of Englishmen
into those of Indians long before there was a sufficient supply of
native teachers fitted either by tradition or by training to conduct an
essentially Western system of education. Not only did the number of
native teachers increase steadily and enormously, but that of the
European teachers actually decreased. Dr. Ashutosh Mookerjee, the
Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University, told me, for instance, that
when he entered the Presidency College about 1880 all the professors,
except a few specialists for purely Oriental subjects, were English, and
the appointment, whilst he was there, of an Indian for the first time as
an ordinary professor created quite a sensation. Last year there were
only eight English professors as against 23 Indians, though, during the
same 30 years, the number of pupils had increased from a little over 350
to close on 700--i.e., it had nearly doubled. The Calcutta Presidency
College is, even so, far better off in this respect than most colleges
except the missionary institutions, in which the European staff of
teachers has been maintained at a strength that explains their continued
success. Out of 127 colleges there are 30 to-day with no Europeans at
all on the staff, and these colleges contain about one-fifth of the
students in all colleges. Of the other colleges 16 have only one
European professor, 21 only two, and so forth. In the secondary schools
the proportion of native to European teachers is even more overwhelming.
From the point of view of mere instruction the results have been highly
unsatisfactory. From the point of view of moral training and discipline
and the formation of character they have been disastrous.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE INDIAN STUDENT.

The fundamental weakness of our Indian educational system is that the
average Indian student cannot bring his education into any direct
relation with the world in which, outside the class or lecture room, he
continues to live. For that world is still the old Indian world of his
forefathers, and it is as far removed as the poles asunder from the
Western world which claims his education. I am not speaking now of the
relatively still very small class amongst whom Western ideas are already
suffici