NCERT Class 8 History Chapter 7 - Civilising the “Native”, Educating the Nation

Chapter 7 - Civilising the “Native”, Educating the Nation

Question 1: What changes were made by the English Education Act of 1835?
Answer: Under the English Education Act 1835:
• English was made the medium of instruction for higher education.
• Promotion of Oriental institutions like the Calcutta Madrasa and Benaras Sanskrit College was stopped.
• These institutions were seen as temples of darkness that were falling of themselves into decay.
• English textbooks began to be produced for schools.

Question 2: What measures were taken by the British after issuing of Wood’s Despatch?
Answer: After the issuing of Wood’s Despatch
• Education departments of the government were set up to extend control over all matters regarding education.
• A system of universities education was introduced. Universities were established in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay.
• Attempts were also made to bring about changes within the system of school education.

Question 3: What was Tagore’s view on education and how was it different from Gandhian view about education?
Answer:
• Tagore felt that childhood ought to be a time of self-learning, outside the rigid and restricting discipline of the schooling system set up by the British.
• He believed that creative learning should be encouraged within a natural environment where the child could explore her own thoughts and desires.
• However, his views were different from Gandhiji in several aspects. Gandhiji was highly critical of western civilisation and its worship of machines and technology whereas Tagore wanted to combine the elements of science and technology along with art, music and dance.

Question 4: Describe Tagore’s abode of peace in brief.
Answer: Santiniketan - Tagore’s abode of peace was established in 1901.
• During his childhood Tagore found his school like a prison - suffocating and oppressive. The experience of his school days shaped his ideas of education.
• So, he chose to set up his school within a natural environment, 100 kilometres away from Calcutta where children could cultivate their natural creativity living in harmony with nature.

Question 5: Why did William Jones feel the need to study Indian history, philosophy and law?
Answer:
• William Jones came to represent a particular attitude towards India. He shared a deep respect for ancient cultures, both of India and of the West.
• Jones and Colebrooke felt that India had attained its glory in the ancient past. It declined later on. In order to understand India, it was necessary to discover the sacred and legal texts produced in the past.
• These texts would reveal the ideas and laws of Hindus and Muslims and would form the basis of future development.
• Jones and Colebrooke believed that their project would help the British learn from Indian culture. Indians would also rediscover their own heritage.
• In this way the British would become guardians and masters of Indian culture.

Question 6: Why did James Mill and Thomas Macaulay think that European education was essential in India?
Answer:
• James Mill and Thomas Macaulay felt that knowledge of the East was full of errors and unscientific thought.
• The knowledge of English would allow Indians to read some of the finest literature the world had produced.
• They also felt that the aim of education should be to teach what was useful and practical.
• So Indians should be made familiar with the scientific and technical advances that the west had made rather than with the poetry and sacred literature of the Orient.
• The teaching of English could thus be a way of civilising people, changing their tastes, values and cultures.

Question 7: Why did Mahatma Gandhi want to teach children handicrafts?
Answer:
• According to Mahatma Gandhi, Western Education focused on reading and writing rather than oral knowledge.
• He argued that education ought to develop a person’s mind and soul.
• Literacy or simply learning to read and write by itself did not count as education.
• People had to work with their hands, learn a craft and know how various things operated.
• Learning handicraft would develop their minds and their capacity to understand.  This would also enable them to know how different things operated.

Question 8: Why did Mahatma Gandhi think that English education had enslaved Indians?
Answer:
• According to Mahatma Gandhi, colonial education created a sense of inferiority in the minds of Indians.
• He said it made them see Western civilisation as superior which destroyed the pride they had in their own culture.
• Mahatma Gandhi wanted an education that could help Indians recover their sense of dignity and self-respect and favoured the teaching in vernacular languages.
• According to him education in English crippled Indians and distanced them from their own social surrounding and made them “strangers in their own lands”.
• He was against the western education which valued text books rather than lived experience and practical knowledge.