Education in Ancient India c9.s3.7

c9.s3.7

The Method of Teaching :—The present generation cannot easily imagine the methods of teaching in primary schools in an age when paper and cheap text books were unknown. Boys of the rich used to write on wooden boards in some kind of colour. There is a sculpture in the Peshawar Museum representing the Buddha in his primary school as holding a rectangular board in his hand and engaged in writing upon it.³ Poorer students used to write on ground, covered with sand or dust. There was no pencil; they used pointed sticks or their own fingers for writing the alphabet. The latter method incidently trained the muscles, the necessity of which is advocated in the Montessori method. The teacher used to write one alphabet on the board and the boys used to shout out its name, as they went on writing it on wooden boards or sand-covered ground. This method is graphically described in a book of the early centuries of the Christian era¹ and prevailed down to recent times. The multiplication tables were recited similarly by the whole class, following the lead given by the teacher or the monitor. Boys had no primers or text books with them down to the middle of the last century, and guardians had not to meet a never ending demand of the school for fresh exercises and copybooks. The practice in writing was not given on paper, for none existed. Boys first acquired the mastery in writing the alphabet on the sand board. When this was done, teachers used to write on a palm leaf with an iron style and hand over the leaf to the pupil for tracing the letters on the same leaf with charcoal ink, which was rubbed out at the end of the day. The same palm leaf thus served as a model for several days and several boys. When the fingers of boys had acquired the necessary suppleness, they were then asked to write on plaintain leaves. When they were well practised in writing on plaintain leaves, they were taught to write on the palm leaf.² More practice was given in writing than in reading, as books were rather rare.