The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.9

c4.9

The major impetus to the Day school movement came from what was termed the ‘Peel’s Act of 1802’. This Act required the employer of young children ‘to provide, during the first four years of the seven years of apprenticeship, competent instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic, and to secure the presence of his apprentice at religious teaching for one hour every Sunday and attendance at a place of worship on that day.’¹² ‘But the Act was unpopular’, and its ‘practical effect...was not great.’¹³ At about the same time, however, the monitorial method of teaching used by Joseph Lancaster (and also by Andrew Bell, supposedly borrowed from India)¹⁴ came into practice and greatly helped advance the cause of popular education. The number of those attending school was estimated at around 40,000 in 1792, at 6,74,883 in 1818, and 21,44,377 in 1851. The total number of schools, public as well as private in 1801 was stated to be 3,363. By stages, it reached a total of 46,114 in 1851.¹⁵