Aims of Colonial Education through the eyes of Prof. Krishna Kumar
According to professor Krishna Kumar, the aims of education could be categorised by different entities: the students, parents and the society.
The students’ aim of education is to expand is capacities, identify his/her likes and dislikes and to develop their interests.
The parents’ aim would be to realize their dreams through the future of their children.
The society’s aim is to align with the Constitution of the Country. The education that is imparted should support the foundation of happiness and peace, which should not stem from a place of fear. It should be rooted to the belief and the trust that the people have towards the justice and the democratic values of the country. The ideal aim of education according to professor Krishna Kumar is to help the child establish intellectual growth by honing his/her innate qualities and inspires the fellow students to hone their qualities as well.
Professor Krishna Kumar believes that the Colonial rule had preferences towards certain ideas, and only those ideas that were accepted by the British acquired more legitimacy than others. Only those ideas or knowledge that was taught in educational institutions were considered to be “valid knowledge”. It was also accepted by the Indian people because of the cultural and economic stress brought into the society by Colonial rule. The predominant part of Indian education was shaped and influenced by an outsider, where the colonizer took the role of an adult and the native took the place of a child. This, the professor considers to be the biggest flaw of the education system established by Colonial rule.
Aims of colonial education and their impact across time and space
The aims of colonial education seem to be quite straightforward from the beginning. British governance used the colonial education system to control the heart and the mind of every Indian. Colonial education wanted to create a class of people Indian in blood and colour , but English in tastes, in intellect, in morals and in opinion. Although the objective is cynical, the process in which the British initially intended to impart education seemed to be egalitarian.
Misrepresentation of Mauclay’s Minute
The aim of colonial education as mentioned by Mauclay in 1835 had an infamous pronouncement “that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” Although this reflected the intrinsic superiority of Western knowledge, recent research which has looked at all 42 of Macaulay’s Educational Minutes. India had two kinds of elites at the time. The reforming and the traditional elites. The research suggests that his aim was to establish a much more egalitarian, inclusive, and secular Anglo-vernacular system of education with the support of the reforming elites, which would contest the hegemony of traditional elites and dominance of Persian-Sanskrit literature, radically challenging caste privilege and promoting the right of poor to education. This effort was thwarted by the British and with the support of the traditional elites, even deepened the Bramanization of educational space in India. After all these struggles, British were happy to have Mauclay be misinterpreted as the villain, for the decades to come in the history of the Anglo Oriental Controversy.
This is evidence that the impact of colonial education was highly influenced by the hegemonic traditional elite who wanted to keep the social order and caste system in place. This ensured continuity in the discrimination of students based on caste religion and social order in the school system.
Effect of colonial system of education the “indigenous” system of education
Through the process of centralization of education, the radical regulation of the curriculum and assessment structures I will say that the colonial education system has changed the course of indegeneous system of education for good.
Flaws in “indigeneous” system of education
The reason I would not use the word “ruined” is because the indigeneous system of education also had its own flaws. Education was offered in a highly hierarchical manner, that was riddled with the caste, creed and gender bias in the society. There was an elite set of students who belonged to the higher castes who had access to the most beneficial mode of education and qualified “gurus”, while the education for the lower caste students was offered vocally with considerably lesser significance. Education was offered by keeping the social order, status, and caste system intact in the indigeneous education system.
Impact of colonial education system on the different groups of people in the sub-continent
More than the idea of imparting education, Western education created this platform for dialogue where identities were formed and reformed, lived, and articulated and which came to form the basis of a nationalist vision for modern nation. The concept of timetabling, uniforms and other western practices labelled the post colonial system of education as liberal, distinctive and scientific. However, at the same time, the education that did not have the influence of colonial education was labelled as primitive, backward and unlightened. Here, I could notice that Dr. Catriona Ellis and Prof. Krishna Kumar have the same point of view. This debate between education being modern vs primitive, liberal vs backward is one of the defining factors that bring out the current status of an established “valid knowledge” in the education system. Prof. Krishna Kumar talks about this in detail where only that part of education that is imparted in the school structure is considered as valid knowledge. The rest of the rich knowledge and life skills that are being learnt in the remotest villages of the country are considered to be something not worth learning.
This ideology has only deepened the gap in the education offered to the masses and the elites. The marginalized communities, including women, minorities and dalits still are struggling to reap the benefits of fundamental rights (Right to Education) which was already offered in our Constitution decades ago. This is mainly due to the systematic oppression and categorization of knowledge based on the mode and place of delivery. Although colonial education has been a major player in bringing about this change in the education system, the indigeneous system of education if had left untouched would still have brought in the same issues in terms of discrimination of knowledge and access to education for the masses.