Decolonization(s) and Education. Daniel Maul

In Ahmedabad district, of the 2,973 boys, 410 were Brahmins, 1,772 trading castes (Wani), 791 boys belonged to the peasant and artisanal castes.¹⁵ In the Burdwan district, Bengal Presidency, out of 12,408 boys, 3,429 were Brahmins, and 4,361 were from artisanal castes, 750 boys came from untouchable castes. They studied with upper-caste boys in the same classroom.¹⁶ Caste was largely disregarded in schools. High caste Brahmin and Muslim boys studied under non- Brahmin teachers.¹⁷ Language and arithmetic formed the backbone of the curriculum in these schools. Vernacular translations of Sanskrit epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata, Amara Kosha, a treatise in ←47 | 48→grammar were used to teach language and grammar. Arithmetic, including multiplication tables, was taught in all these schools. Some schools taught boys to “cast up accounts and to draw out a bill of exchange, book-keeping and calculate compound interest” in their curriculum.¹⁸

      The majority of teachers and students were ‘miserably poor,’ and parents of the boys paid a monthly fee and occasional gifts to the teachers. The poor students received education gratis.¹⁹ On average, the earnings of teachers were lower than that of agricultural labourers. In spite of the low economic status, poor teachers and students were well respected.²⁰ This was because of the underlying Indian belief that one could pursue knowledge only by giving up comforts and the Indian tradition had numerous examples, including that of Gautama the Buddha. So, the pre-colonial vernacular schools in India were open to boys from all castes, a very high standard of literacy and numeracy was taught, and the parents paid for such education. The chief drawback in terms of access was that girls were not allowed into these schools.

      The education system in England

      England too exhibited a similar trend in the pre-modern times. Richard Aldrich has quoted an instance of how “a beggar’s brat could become a bishop, and sit among the peers of the realm and lord’s sons and knights crouch to him.” However, in the sixteenth century, the establishment of the Anglican Church legitimised social stratification.²¹ The expansion of trade and Empire enabled the English elites to strengthen their position. The industrialisation further alienated the poor from education.²² By the eighteenth century, two parallel systems of education emerged, wherein the elite children were prepared by either private tutors or expensive private ‘preparatory schools’ to enter exclusive secondary ←48 | 49→schools called Grammar Schools. This type of institutions taught Greek, Latin, and mathematics, and served as a gateway to the universities.²³ The poor could send their children to Charity schools, Schools of Industry and Sunday schools which gave only rudimentary instruction in reading and reinforced the existing social stratification. Sunday schools were promoted by the social reformer Robert Raikes (1736–1811) who argued that for the children who worked the entire week, Sunday was a day of freedom, where “the misuse of Sunday appears by the declaration of every criminal to be their first step in the course of wickedness.” The parents paid one dime per week. The Sunday schools thus aimed to keep the children occupied to prevent crime.²⁴

      The Schools of Industry were much more severe kind of system. As early as 1675 Thomas Firmian (1632–1697) had erected a spinning factory where children of four or five years of age were taught to read and spin. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the English philosopher John Locke argued that “the children of labouring people are an ordinary burden to the parish, and are usually maintained in idleness so that their labour also is generally lost to the public till they are 12 or 14 years old.” He, therefore, suggested that ‘working schools’ be set up in each parish in England for poor children so that they will be “from infancy [three years old] inured to work.” He went on to outline the economics of these schools, arguing not only that they will be profitable for the parish, but also that they will instil a good work ethic in the children.²⁵ Several industrial schools set up in the early part of the eighteenth century taught gardening, carpentry, cobbling and printing to boys and spinning, knitting, sewing and straw-plaiting to girls. The work done by the children was sold, and proceeds went to their maintenance. If the child’s earnings exceeded the cost of his keep, he was given a cash payment. The idea was to make schools self-supporting. In some schools of industry, children were taught reading and writing, but there was always the temptation to emphasise the occupational aspect to cover expenses. The boys’ schools were largely a failure as their products did not command the market like ←49 | 50→those from girl’s schools. These schools declined due to industrialisation as even very young children came to be employed in modern factories.

      The underlying idea common to all three kinds of schools was that the poor ought to be trained to accept and internalize the existing social stratification. Even though the educational attainments of these children were in no way a threat to the elite monopoly of Grammar schools and the universities, it was still resented. It was argued that the education of the poor would result in discontent and rebellion. The poor occupied a position in society which had been assigned to them, and if they were to be labourers, they should be used to their position from the first.²⁶

      The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church was established in 1811 in London. The society established a network of schools for the poor.²⁷ The purpose of the system was to “infuse […] a cheerful and uniform subjection to all lawful authority,” and to keep them away from “discontentment.”²⁸ The Church wished that “the children to learn through their readers about the demarcation between rich and poor and the mutual dependence of each in a harmonious society. Contentment in the station of life to which God had assigned them was an important precept.” A fable meant for children gave the example of what disaster would befall a person if the various parts of the human body went on strike in protest at the seeming greed and selfishness of the stomach. The fable explains that the stomach is to the body what the rich man is to the poor man in society, and concludes that “a rich man, even though he may care for no one but himself, can hardly avoid benefitting his neighbours.”²⁹ Even this disciplining of children from the most impoverished section of the society was not free; the parents had to pay one shilling per quarter on first Monday in January, April, July, and October.³⁰ So the poor paid for being disciplined by the Church.

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      These measures were eventually opposed and countered by English liberals. They were successful in getting various education acts passed only after 1870 and compulsory and free education was successfully implemented throughout England.

      The colonial state policy in India

      The colonial state in India virtually followed the system that was practised in England. It closed down the schools established by the Scottish officers like Thomas Munro, T. B. Macaulay, Robert Shortread and others as they contained boys from “lower classes and miserable background”.³¹ It was while upturning Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 by his own Minute of 1839 that governor-general Auckland argued that if modern education was given to the poor “the student may be unhappy and discontented in his peculiar position.” It was not Macaulay’s Minute but Auckland’s Minute that laid the foundation for the educational policy of the colonial state. It encouraged the admission of the children of landlords and repeatedly told the headmasters to dismiss the boys from a poor background; it closed down over 100 schools as they had “no sons of the landed gentry.” It carefully trained and appointed Brahmins