Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA.
61
CHAPTER V.
Education.
84. In Chapter VII of .his Report Mr. Eales has dwelt at some length on the
SyStem °
f educat,onaI
cUsX«tton.
unsuitability of the educational classification adopted
at the 1 891 Census, namely, that which divided the
population into (1) literates, (2) learners and (3)
illiterates. The anomaly of a system which places the advanced student on a
lower educational level than the ploughman who has just—but only just—the requisite
smattering of the first two of the three R's, and which has produced figures so
unreliable as those adverted to by Mr. Maclagan in Chapter VII of the Punjab
Report for 1891, is so obvious that it is hardly surprising that this threefold classification
should have been discarded in 1901 in favour of one which recognizes
only two educational classes, the literate and the illiterate, namely, those able and
those not able to read and write. Even under the simplified system there is still
boundless scope for difference of opinion as to the precise amount of reading arid
writing required to place an individual in the category of literates, and it is well
clearly to recognize that the returns can give at best but a very superficial view
of the ran^e of education in a province like Burma where, while scholarship is
uncommon^ absolute ignorance of the alphabet is comparatively rare. Such as it
is, however, the information contained in the schedules is far more likely to mark
with accuracy the dividing line between the lettered and the unlettered now that
it is possible to dismiss entirely from consideration one of the points which in
1891 left room for variety of treatment.
85. The alteration in classification, though in itself eminently desirable, detracts
somewhat from the value of a comparison of the
Impossibility of fully contrasting figures of the recent census with those of the censuses
oulSusTf the figUreS PreV " preceding it. Generally speaking, there would seem
to be prima" facie grounds for assuming that those
returned as ' ' literate " at the recent census must correspond more or less roughly
with the "literates" and "learners" of the 1891 enumeration, but the experience
of the past shows us that the assumption may often be a rash one. It may
be that ten years ago care was, as a rule, taken to include among those under instruction
only those who had actually embarked on a course of tuition, but there is
no warrant that here and there the expression " under instruction " may not have
been construed as liberally as by some of the enumerators of Kyaukpyu who, in 1881,
sanguine to a fault, took the will for the deed and treated as learners the offspring of
parents who " intended at some time or other " to send their children to a school
or monastery. For the purposes of comparison with other countries where the
distinction between learners and literates is not preserved, Mr. Eales classed in
his Report those under instruction with the literates. The Census Commissioner
for India, however, inclines to the view that persons shown as "learning" at former
enumerations should not be treated as literate for the purposes of the 1901
Census. This opinion has been arrived at by him after a perusal of some of the
returns "for the present enumeration. These would appear to show that as .a rule
those under tuition have not ordinarily been shown as literate, and Mr. Risley has
therefore inferred that in 1881 and 189^ when learners were separately dealt with,
they were still more likely to have been excluded from the ranks of the literate.
For these reasons I have decided ordinarily to treat the literates of the 1901
enumeration as corresponding with the literates of the previous censuses. It will,
however always be safest to judge from the figures themselves how far such a
classification is justified in a comparison with earlier returns.
86. There is another matter which militates against a detailed comparison of
the figures for the two enumerations ; that is the altera-
Alteration of age periods.
t jon ^ thg periods selected for exhibition in the
table dealing specially with the education of the people as a whole—Imperial
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