precis writing on education
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The state of education in India before the British occupation is, unfortunately, a favourite subject for political dissertations. This had led to a certain confusion of thought about the various types of indigenous teaching of which three were of importance in the eighteenth century. The ideal training for the Brahmin youth is of great antiquity and represents an extremely high standard of education. After assuming the sacred thread at the age of eight the boy would spend fourteen years away from his home under the personal supervision of his guru or in the forest ashram. Such anSuch an upbringing was always confined to a very small and highly privileged class and was probably common only in the heyday of Brahminism. This was not a type of education in which the Government could take part, though the traditional relation between guru and chela might be an inspiration to university teachers, as it had been to Rabindranath Tagore in his ashram at Shantiniketan. Two other institutions catered for a wider but still limited range of boys. These were the Muslim and Hindu schools which were common in the towns and larger villages. Both suffered during the eighteenth century from the continual disorders which disturbed most parts of the peninsula, but they were found in many districts, when they came under British rule, and their work and scope are described in early reports. Most of them were of a very primitive nature, being usually attached to a temple or mosque. This meant the exclusion of the lower castes and the primitive tribes, and it is typical of the early attitude of the Government towards elementary education that almost the first elementary State schools were for the children of Bhils, Gonds, and of criminals whose parents could not send them to religious schools.