In more developed societies, formal education acquires greater importance, the period of systematic instruction increases, and a specialized occupational group of teachers is formed. Thus, in ancient India, formal instruction was provided by the Brahmins. The pupil’s first introduction was at the age of 5. He commenced by learning the alphabets for the first time, and this was open to the children of all ages.

Then followed the ceremony of tonsure, which was followed by the student initiation ceremony at the normal age of 8 for a Brahmin, 11 for a Kshatriya, and 12 for a Vaisya… The entire educational system was based upon this ancient system of studentship which laid more emphasis on life than on learning or instruction.

It was based upon constant personal contact between teacher and pupil, bound together Jay a spiritual tie, living in a common home … The student, after his initiation, entered into a new life whereby he was re-created by his teacher and had to undergo a twofold course of discipline- physical and spiritual’. This educational system, however, extended to only a small minority of the population; and it was conducted by a hereditary priesthood chiefly concerned with the transmission of religious doctrines and largely excluding secular instruction.

‘Throughout the centuries the Brahmins, who were the repositories of learning and the directors of Hindu life, continued to brood upon and to elaborate the sacred texts and to transmit their study in religious institutions-tulles’ and vidyalayas and chatuspathis-to succeeding generations’. Technical skills were imparted chiefly through the family and the occupational group, in informal and practical ways. This was very largely the case in all societies before the rise of modern science and industry, but the predominance of religious education was greater in India than in Western or Islamic societies, or in China.

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The disorder accompanying the decline of the Mughal Empire brought about a deterioration and contraction of the educational system, and the subsequent establishment of the British rule in India, though it made possible educational progress, also created new problems.

At first the British rulers supported traditional Hindu schools and promoted the establishment of new schools and colleges; but in 1835 the decision was taken that the Government should aim at the promotion of European literature and. science in India, that the medium of instruction should be English, and that the Education Fund should be employed on English education alone.

This policy received the support of many Indian reformers, among them Raja Ram Mohan Roy, and generally of the new commercial middle class; but as D. P. Mukerji observes, it tended to reinforce the separation of the upper classes from the rest of society.

True, those responsible for education reiterated in the education dispatch of 1854 that, ‘our object is to extend European knowledge throughout all classes of the people’; but they also proposed to continue with the same methods: ‘This object must be reflected by means of the English language in the higher branches of instruction and by that of the vernacular languages of India to the great mass of the people’.

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Furthermore, in practice effort was concentrated upon the education of the upper and middle classes, and relatively little progress was made in establishing an adequate system of primary education. Thus in 1881-2 it is estimated those 1 in 10 boys and 1 in 250 girls between the ages of 5 and 12 years attended school, and most attended for such short periods as not to become permanently literate. In 1939, 90 per cent of the populations were still illiterate. Undoubtedly, therefore, the educational system tended to maintain and even increase the gulf between the upper classes and the mass of the population, and to make this separation more complete by transforming it into one of language and general culture.