The name is absent

roles under the British Raj. The basic assumptions which
underlay this help explain the colonial legacy in these
schools .

The schools also helped to preserve and extend the power,
prestige and wealth of the European military, missionaries
and traders. They linked the English language and
Christian religion to a specific community - the Anglo-
Indians. (7) Neither colonial administrators nor Christian
missionaries, it seems, were committed to producing
students who were competitive, ambitious and desirous of
higher education.

Chapter 3 of the thesis argues that the schools developed
a two-tiered structure: the "High-and-Mighty-Hill-Schools";
and the "Poorer-Plains Schools". (8) A selective admission
criteria grew up, which effectively divided the "haves"
from the "have-nots". The "Great Divide" reinforced the
under-achievement in the socio-economic strata of the
Anglo-Indian community. The repressive nature of the
schooling process is nowhere more clearly revealed than in
the statistics about poverty in the Anglo-Indian community
at the end of the nineteenth century. The educational
system served through a correspondence of its relations
with the British colonialists to reproduce economic
inequality and distorted the Anglo-Indian's ambition for
higher education. (9)

Chapter 4 describes the twentieth century patrons of Anglo-
Indian schools. These were the wealthy Indians who wanted
an education in an English medium school. In spite of the
best efforts of the various Associations who help the
Anglo-Indians, these schools in 1990 were catering to only
a few Anglo-Indians. Even the so called "poorer plains
schools" were catering for the new Indian elite rather than
the poor Anglo-Indians and as a result, had also become
wealthy schools. (10) Anglo-Indians were staying away from

35

<<   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   >>

More intriguing information