Our present system of Indian education in fact presents in an exaggerated form, from the point of view of the cultivation of the intellect, most of the defects alleged against a classical education by its bitterest opponents in Western countries, where, after all, the classics form only a part, however important, of the curriculum, and neither Latin nor Greek is the only medium for the teaching of every subject. From the point of view of the formation of character according to Western standards, and even from that of physical improvement, the case is even worse. In Western countries the education given in our schools, from the Board school to the University, is always more or less on the same plane as that of the class from which the boys who attend them are drawn. It is merely the continuation and the complement of the education our children receive in their own homes from the moment of their birth, and it moves on the same lines as the world in which they live and move and have their being. In India, with rare exceptions, it is not so, but exactly the reverse. On the deficiencies of the system, from the moral point of view, a new and terribly lurid light has been shed within the last few years. There has been no more deplorable feature in the present political agitation than the active part taken in it by Indian schoolboys and students. It has been a prominent feature everywhere, but nowhere more so than in the Bengal provinces, where from the very outset of the boycott movement in 1905 picketing of the most aggressive character was conducted by bands of young Hindus who ought to have been doing their lessons. That was only the beginning, and the state of utter demoralization that was ultimately reached may be gathered from the following statements in the last Provincial Report on Education (1908-9), issued by the Government of Eastern Bengal:-- On the 7th of August [1908] most of the Hindu students abstained from attending the college and high schools at Comilla as a demonstration in connexion with the boycott anniversary. Immediately afterwards, on the date of the execution of the Muzafferpur murderer, the boys of several schools in the province attended barefooted and without shirts and in some cases fasting.... At Jamalpur the demonstration lasted a week.... Later in the year, on the occasion of the execution of one of the Alipur murderers, the pupils of the Sandip Cargill school made a similar demonstration. The report adds, in a sanguine vein, that, as a result of various disciplinary measures, a marked improvement had subsequently taken place, but quite recent events, during the great conspiracy trial at Dacca, show that something more than disciplinary measures is required to eradicate the spirit which inspired such occurrences.