Against this it is urged that it would be entirely at variance with Indian traditions to associate standards of knowledge with standards of wealth, and, in practice, education has, I understand, been 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 irreconcilable politicians if greater trouble were taken to explain the questions at issue.