Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
The fundamental weakness of our Indian educational system is that the
average Indian student cannot bring his education into any direct
relation with the world in which, outside the class or lecture room, he
continues to live. For that world is still the old Indian world of his
forefathers, and it is as far removed as the poles asunder from the
Western world which claims his education. I am not speaking now of the
relatively still very small class amongst whom Western ideas are already
sufficiently acclimatized for the parents to be able to supplement in
their own homes the education given to their children in our schools and
colleges. Nor am I speaking of the students who live in hostels under
the superintendence of high-minded Englishmen, and especially of
missionaries such as those of the Oxford Mission in Calcutta, or the
Madras Christian College, who have to reject scores of applicants for
want of space. Those also form but a small minority. In Calcutta, for
instance, out of 4,500 students barely 1,000 live in hostels, and not
all hostels are by any means satisfactory. In the Indian Universities
there is no collegiate life such as English Universities afford, and in
India most of the secondary schools as well as colleges are
non-residential. The majority of those who attend them, unless they live
at home, have therefore to board out with friends or to live in
promiscuous messes, or, as is too often the case, in lodgings of a very
undesirable character, sometimes even in brothels, and almost always
under conditions intellectually, morally, and physically deleterious.
Lest I may be accused of exaggeration or bias, I will appeal here to the
testimony of Dr. Garfield Williams, a missionary of the highest repute
and experience, and in profound sympathy with the natives of India.
Speaking at the Missionary Conference at Calcutta last winter, he
said:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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