en found to be
worst where the fees bear the greatest proportion to the total
expenditure. The same arguments equally apply for and against raising
the fees in secondary schools. In regard to the latter, however, the
opponents of any general increase of fees make, nevertheless, a
suggestion which deserves consideration. In many schools the fees begin
at a very low figure--eight annas (8d.) a month in the lowest forms and
rise to three, four, and even five rupees (4s. 5s. 4d. and 6s. 8d.) a
month in the highest forms. It is this initial cheapness which induces
so many thoughtless parents to send their boys to secondary schools
without having considered whether they can afford to keep them through
the whole course, whilst it fosters the notion that badly paid and badly
qualified teachers are good enough for the early, which are often the
most important, stages, of a boy's education. To obviate these evils it
is suggested that the fees for all forms should be equalized.

I shall have occasion later on to point out the immense importance of
giving greater encouragement to scientific and technical education.
Government service and the liberal professions are already overstocked,
and it is absolutely necessary to check the tendency of young Indians to
go in for a merely literary education for which, even if it were more
thorough than it can be under existing conditions, there is no longer
any sufficient outlet. The demand which is arising all over India for
commercial and industrial development should afford an unrivalled
opportunity of deflecting education into more useful and practical
channels.

Some better machinery than exists at present seems also to be required
to bring the Educational Service into touch with parents. Education can
nowhere be a question of mere pedagogics, and least of all in India. Yet
there is evidently a strong tendency to treat it as such. To take only
one instance, the tasks imposed upon schoolboys and students by the
exigencies of an elaborate curriculum are often excessive, and there
have been cases when the intervention of other authorities has been
necessary to bring the education officers to listen to the reasonable
grievances of parents. If in these and other matters parents were more
freely consulted, they would probably be more disposed to give education
officers the support of their parental authority. There are many points
upon which native opinion would not be so easily misled by
irre