The Colonial Legacy in Indian Education

They say teachers teach how they were taught, but at Taktse the opposite can be true. Many faculty members say they work hard to avoid recreating their own school experiences, which often involved public shaming and corporal punishment. Many of the schools these teachers attended trace their origins back to the colonial education system laid out by British politician Thomas Macaulay, whose 1835 Minute on Indian Education advocated replacing Arabic and Sanskrit schools with English ones. He hoped this system that would both enlighten the "comparatively ignorant" peoples of the subcontinent and create a class of Anglicized clerks to work for Britain's growing empire. After independence, the Indian government left much of the educational bureaucracy in place, including, some critics say, the cultural prejudices that went with it. The term "Macaulayism" has now grown to refer to any attempt by a colonizing culture to impose itself on its colonies through education. Almost 70 years after the end of British rule, it's a legacy that Taktse's teachers are still sifting through. For more, read the feature story "East, West, and Ten-drel."