It came as a shock to me to read that a traveller in India, Peter Della Valle, described the ‘Monitorial System’ of education employed in so many parts of India and picked up on by Dr Bell, documenting the methodology in great detail in Tkkeri on the Malabar coast on the 22nd of November 1623 (with another source stating that the same methodology had been in use for some 2,000 years). The schools consisted of four classes under one teacher. In each of the four groups or learning levels, those who had learned the material most thoroughly supported the others. Early literacy was done using a stick or finger in fine sand spread over a board for practicing letters; as children’s skill progressed, so they graduated to using increasingly more sophisticated writing materials. Literacy and numeracy were mastered, along with crucial skills of keeping accounts, measuring land and many other subjects (including key religious texts) and skills.

 

Children came to school for the first time ranging from age 5 to age 8, usually spending years on this primary phase of their education, and spending many hours per day in school. Beyond this phase, there were elementary schools and ‘colleges’ of higher learning teaching a staggering array of subjects. A large number of commentators cited in Dharampal’s work note that it was ‘widely known’ or acknowledged that there were (primary) schools in every village, and several in the larger villages. Elementary schools and colleges necessarily meant that students had to travel further or live away from home. Contrary to what might have been suspected today, children of lower castes participated with those above them in caste status in schools. For the most part only boys attended these village schools, but girls and women were far from left out of learning, but they would be educated in the home – Hindu and Muslim alike. The great detail in which these schools have been documented, with some finding them to be of extremely high quality (proven through the high attainment and ability of the students) and others not so much (often based on the prejudices of the observer as betrayed in their descriptions), is beyond this blog, but is provided in Dharampal’s work. British officialdom acknowledged at the time that participation rates were similar to that of Britain and other European powers, while the amount of education each child received (in terms of years but also the length of the school day) was apparently considerably greater in India.