Pabna - at the Bengal Provincial Conference

13.Feb.1908

"...the University system was defective in its aims and methods intended only to serve the purposes of the Government, not the requirements of the country. It turned out machines for administrative and professional work, not men. The national system of education was intended to create a nation. It must produce men with all their faculties trained, full of patriotism, and mentally, morally, physically the equals of the men of any other nation...."

The subject of National Education, recognised by the Indian National Congress, was proposed for adoption at the Bengal Provincial Conference, held in Pabna, in the second week of February.

The resolution on the subject adopted by this year’s conference has been a considerable advance upon those adopted at the previous years’ conferences by the addition of the phrase “to establish and maintain National Schools throughout the country” in the following wording of the resolution: –

“That in the opinion of this conference steps should be taken for promoting a system of education, literary, scientific and technical, suited to the requirements of the country on national lines under national control and to establish and maintain national schools throughout the country.”

The resolution was moved by Srijukta Aurobindo Ghose, B.A. (Cantab) of the Bengal National College in a short but inspiring speech.

He said that national education was a work which had already been accomplished and was already visible in a concrete shape to the eyes of the people. There was the Bengal National College at Calcutta and there were about 25 secondary National Schools at work in the mofussil under the direction of the National Council of Education. There were besides some three hundred primary National Schools, all seeking the aid of the Council, which in its turn should be more liberally supported by the whole of Bengal in order to enable it to do its sacred work. The National Schools will train and send out workers who will devote themselves completely to the service of the country and raise her once more to the old position of glory which she once occupied in the scale of nations.