The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c7.5

c7.5

The learning of the Malabar is probably more limited than that of the more central people of India; but they are not inattentive to the cultivation of letters. They are particularly anxious and attentive to instruct their children to read and to write. Education with them is an early and an important business in every family. Many of their women are taught to read and write. The Bramans are generally the school masters, but any of the respectable castes may, and often do, practice teaching. The children are instructed without violence, and by a process peculiarly simple. It is the same system which has caused so much heat and controversy, as to the inventors of it, in this country, and the merit of which was due to neither of the claimants.¹ The system was borrowed from the Bramans and brought from India to Europe. It has been made the foundation of National schools in every enlightened country. Some gratitude is due to a people from whom we have learnt to diffuse among the lower ranks of society instruction by one of the most unerring and economical methods which has ever been invented. The pupils are the monitors of each other, and the characters are traced with a rod, or the finger on the sand. Reading and writing are acquired at the same time, and by the same process. This mode of teaching however is only initial. If the pupil is meant to study the higher branches of learning, he is removed from these primary schools, where the arts of reading, writing and accounts are acquired, and placed under more scientific masters. It is to these elementary schools that the labouring classes in India owe their education. It gives them an access, from the introduction of the system into this part of the world; advantage which the same classes in Europe, only now partially conferred on them a superior share of intelligence and placed them in a situation to perform better all the duties of life.