A Comparative Survey of Educational Aims and Methods in British India and British Tropical Africa

Extract

The fact that the Yearbooks of Education, 1932, 1933, edited by Lord Eustace Percy, devote a large portion of their space to education in British dependencies, and that the whole of the Educational Yearbook, 1931, of the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University, is devoted to a study of Colonial systems of education, with a liberal apportionment of space to British Colonial policy, shows the widespread interest that is now being taken in the education of the more primitive or indigenous races for which the more advanced countries are acting as trustees. The articles on British Tropical Africa and British India in the Yearbooks of Education, 1932 and 1933, and the survey of education in Tanganyika Territory in the Columbia University Yearbook, afford material for a comparison of educational aims in Africa and India, which may be of interest to the reader, as it certainly has been a source of profit to the writer of this article. The time has not yet come for passing any judgement on British educational policy in the African colonies, and it would be rash to predict the results of plans that have not yet matured and are constantly being adapted to changing conditions and newly discovered needs. But it is possible to survey as a whole the history of education in India from the date of Macaulay's Minute up to 1920, when education passed from the control of the central British Government to the charge of Ministers responsible to Provincial Legislative Councils. This history reveals risks to which tropical races brought into educational contact with western civilization are exposed, and suggests, by its record, of failure as well as success, means whereby these risks, so far as they are real in Africa, may be minimized. Sir Philip Hartog and Mr. Rivers-Smith are so well qualified for the work they have done in these Yearbooks, and have been so cautious in their presentation of the Indian and African situation, that no careful reader of their articles is likely to suppose that conclusions drawn from the one country are necessarily applicable to the other. But there is very much to be gained from a comparative study.