The Beautiful Tree (37 page)

I found
I
could read his books. And his “one or two ideas” seemed like dynamite to me. For they vividly showed how the “economical” method of teaching in the private schools for the poor in India became translated into a method that transformed education in Victorian England and beyond. And this borrowing from Indian education struck me as something that could also be relevant to England today.

Dr. Bell had arrived in India in 1787 to take up position as the principal of a school, the Military Male Orphan Asylum, in Fort St. George, now Chennai (previously Madras), to teach the abandoned progeny of British soldiers and native women.
³⁴
He found that the (expatriate) teachers in the asylum “had no knowledge of their duties, and no very great love for them.” But then he had his moment of insight: “One morning, in the course of his early ride along the surf-beaten shore of Madras, he happened to pass a . . . school, which, as usual with Indian schools, was held in the open air. He saw the little children writing with their fingers on sand, which, after the fashion of such schools, had been strewn before them for that purpose.” He also saw them peer teaching, children learning from one another rather than from their masters. “He turned his horse, galloped home, shouting, ‘Heureka! Heureka!’ and now believed that he . . . saw his way straight before him.”
³⁵

Bell first tried an experiment. He got one of the older boys who knew his alphabet to teach one of the classes that “the master had pronounced impossible” to teach. But this boy managed to teach the class “with ease.” Bell appointed him the class’s teacher. “The success exceeded expectation. This class, which had been before worse, was now better taught, than any other in the school.” He tried it in other classes, and it worked again. So Bell sacked all his teachers, and the school “
was entirely taught by the boys
” under his supervision.
³⁶

Bell returned to London in 1797 and published the description of his “Madras Method.” Following that, he was in great demand to introduce the system in British schools. First was St. Botolph’s, Aldgate in East London, followed swiftly by schools in the north of England. The method was adopted by the new National Society for the Education of the Poor in 1811. By 1821, 300,000 children were being educated under Bell’s principles. As it became widely emulated, Bell was asked to write an extended outline of the system, which he published in 1823. His ideas were adopted around Europe, and as far away as the West Indies and Bogotá, Colombia; the educational reformer Pestalozzi was apparently even using the Madras Method.

And Joseph Lancaster, who created the famed Lancastrian schools across Britain—and with whom Bell was to have a furious dispute about who really invented the system—introduced peer learning in his first London school, in Borough Road, in 1801. The system transformed education in the Western world and was arguably the basis by which mass literacy in Britain was achieved. But in its fundamental, “economical” principles, it wasn’t invented by either Bell or Lancaster. It was based precisely on what the Rev. Dr. Andrew Bell had observed in India.

Far from being a weakness of the indigenous (private) education system, the cost-effective teaching methods used in the indigenous private schools of 19th-century India were in fact a manifest strength; so much so, as the supposedly critical Campbell noted, they were imitated in Britain, then across Europe and the world, and did so much to raise educational standards.

None of the key “problems” with the quality of the indigenous private education system appeared substantial. However, Munro instituted reforms in Madras, with similar reforms copied in the Bengal and Bombay presidencies, to overcome these supposed “problems.”’ But the way these reforms were instituted does much to show the
strengths
of the indigenous system, rather than its purported weakness. The way the solutions brought their own problems again eerily resonates with what is happening in developing countries today. Again, it didn’t seem as though we’d learned much from history.

Munro recommended several reforms. To the problem of the inadequate number of schools—for they didn’t reach every child, only as many as in other European countries—he proposed “the endowment of schools throughout the country by Government.”
³⁷
That is, creating new state schools. Doing so would also begin to solve the problem of inadequate school buildings, as they would each be in its own modern purpose-built settings, properly funded. The “problem” of inadequate teaching methods would be met with the provision of enough teachers to get rid of the (as it turns out, even by contemporaneous observers, highly effective) pupil-teacher system. And to the major problem that bothered all the critics, the inadequacy of teachers’ pay, Munro proposed paying salaries of 9 rupees per month in the village schools to 15 rupees per month in the towns, out of government coffers: “These allowances may appear small,” he noted (in fact, they are considerably higher than the contemporaneous salaries), but, supplemented by fees from students, the schoolteachers’ situation “will probably be better than that of a parish schoolmaster in Scotland.” Quite why this was deemed necessary for poor India was not explained.

Furthermore, he proposed creating a teacher-training college, and to ensure quality, a new Committee of Public Instruction would oversee “the establishing of the public schools” and would fix the curriculum and teaching methods to be used in them.

Finally appointed on June 1, 1826, the Committee of Public Instruction included one A. D. Campbell, the erstwhile Bellary district collector, whose criticisms of the indigenous system had clearly done him no harm. By 1830, however, only 84 schools had been established—14 in the towns and 70 in the villages. These must be contrasted with the 11,575 schools provided by the indigenous system, as reported by Munro. And only four years later, the Committee of Public Instruction was receiving complaints about the system’s inadequacies. By 1835, it was recommended that the new schools be abolished, something that was effected in 1836. At the same time, the Committee of Public Instruction was replaced by the Committee for Native Education. In just a decade, Munro’s reforms had failed.

The reasons for the failure are edifying—suggesting that the kind of state system being imposed was inferior to the indigenous system that it was brought in to replace. Five reasons for the failure stood out for me.

First, it became apparent that the hoped-for improvement in the quality of teachers, by training them through the expensive teacher-training school and paying them much higher wages, failed. Contrary to what Munro and others had supposed, there simply wasn’t a large group of better-educated people willing to become school-masters in the poor villages, whatever the pay. According to statements submitted to the Committee of Public Instruction, the village schools “were rather prematurely introduced before a proper class of teachers for them had been available.”
³⁸
Just as in the private schools for the poor today in India and elsewhere, the level of teachers’ pay in the indigenous schools reflected teacher availability. The low wages were, if this observation is correct, not low at all, but simply reflected the market rate.

Second, in the new government-funded schools, it soon became apparent that political patronage, not teaching commitment and skill, influenced the way teaching appointments were made. The Committee of Public Instruction heard that “personal or local influence would necessarily often supersede individual qualification or merit under such a mode of election.” Now the collectors were reporting that the new state teachers were “inferior on the whole to the common village school masters, and, in general, ignorant also.” In other words, the good pay and job security made the positions attractive—not to those who wanted to teach, but to those who could be bought for political patronage. An exactly parallel criticism is raised today of teachers paid by the state, in India and elsewhere.

Third, completely against the committee’s explicit intentions, the new schools were excluding everyone apart from the elite, the Brahmins. Why? One source suggested that the government “was uneasy about low-caste people being admitted to the . . . Schools. It was feared that, if they were encouraged, the upper classes would show resentment and withdraw their support.” So the new public schools became a vehicle to promote caste privilege, rather than a vehicle for improvement of all. Again, it would seem that the indigenous system had unnoticed strengths in promoting education of all, including the lowest castes.

Fourth, one of the great problems reported to the committee was the lack of efficient supervision.
The new state schools became accountable to no one
. The collectors, who should have been supervising them, were reportedly too busy with other business. One collector’s assessment is stark: he “doubted the efficiency of the schools which in effect were in no way superior to the already existing private schools.” Munro had taken for granted that the success of his public schools could be guaranteed—after all, they would be better funded and equipped than the indigenous private schools. He didn’t take into account the problem of supervision and accountability. What he failed to consider was the way that indigenous village schools were already accountable, but not to any central administration. He had failed to note the missing ingredient of accountability in the private system, the same one that so perplexes educational reformers to this day.

Fifth, the new schools were designed to be much larger than the small, “inefficient” private schools—they had to be large because teachers were paid much more, and so economies of scale were required to make them viable. But parents didn’t like their size. One collector observed that parents “complained of too great a number of students for the teacher to give proper attention. Hence parents wished to send their children to schools with fewer number [
sic
]. There were 150 private schools in the District.” In other words, it was an overlooked hidden strength of the indigenous system that it reflected parental desires for small schools and small classes. The indigenous system had organically evolved to reflect parental choice; the imposed system did not. And because the new schools were designed to be larger, so (theoretically) more efficient, there couldn’t possibly be one in every village. One collector reported that “the Schools were very remote from each other,” which was a problem for inspection (the collector’s concern), but obviously for parents too—the schools were too inaccessible to their children. This conjecture is supported by evidence from elsewhere: “Schools in the district were not in a flourishing condition. Children were unable to attend from a distance.” Again, it seems a strength of the indigenous system that schools’ small size—based on the reality of low teacher pay—reflected what parents wanted, namely, a school in their own village, not one to which their children had to commute a long distance. Again, we see parallels with what private schools for the poor are providing today, in contrast to what public schools are providing. Then as now, parents preferred small schools close to their homes, not large remote schools designed for the convenience of bureaucrats.

It seemed that there was one final possible criticism of the indigenous private education system. Its quality, whatever its critics claimed, was not suspect—in fact, villagers created schools that adequately reflected the conditions of the villages and used what was available in an economical and efficient manner, so much so, that their successful methods influenced the way education was delivered in Britain and around the world. But it is true, the schools didn’t reach
everyone
. While they may have reached as many children as were reached in European countries, including England, and reached children of all castes, coverage was certainly not universal. Could it be that the British style of intervention of publicly funded and provided education was the only way that
universal education
could be achieved?

This counterfactual question of course cannot be answered definitively. But there are interesting indicators as to what the answer might be. For we can see what growth was brought in by the system the British did impose, with its new public schools. And we can look at what happened in England during the same period to gauge what might have happened if the British had not imposed their system in India.

Because of the lack of success of Munro’s reforms, a new approach, with a new style of reformer, was introduced. Enter Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), the British poet, historian, and Whig. Between 1834 and 1838, he took up residence in Calcutta, serving as president of the General Committee of Public Instruction for the British presidency. Everyone in India knows his name. For it is to him more than any other that we owe the public schooling system that still prevails in India today.

Macaulay’s famous minute of February 2, 1835, set the seal on a different kind of state intervention in education.
³⁹
He was totally dismissive of Indian indigenous scholarship: “It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected in all the books written in the Sanscrit [
sic
] language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England.” Indian history abounded “with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long.” Indian astronomy “would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school.” Indian geography was “made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter.” And he totally ignored any contribution that the indigenous private schools might be making to education in India. Instead, he opined, “The great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India, and that all the funds appropriated for the purposes of education would be best employed on English education alone.”