British Colonial Education Research Articles

British Colonial Education in the Indian Subcontinent (1757-1858): Attitude of Muslims

This article investigates the British colonial education imparted in the Indian Subcontinent during the priod 1757-1858, keeping in view the Muslim perspective. The objective is to comprehend the complex and diverse ways in which Muslims responded to British education throughout the colonial era, which were influenced by revolutionary and reactionary movements ignited by British domination. Muslims developed a complicated relationship with colonial education as a result of tensions heightened by the repression of indigenous concerns and the disregard for the acquisition of Islamic values. This study aims to comprehend the purpose of British education in the Indian subcontinent, analyses competing Muslim ideologies surrounding colonial education, uncovers factors influencing Muslim attitudes toward education during the British rule, and also analyses the differences in how different groups of Muslims responded to British education throughout British colonialism. For this purpose, this study uses a qualitative research methodology to investigate historical sources and determine the factors contributing to the hostile and defensive views of Indian Muslims regarding colonial education. The findings demonstrate the complex effects of British colonial policies, underlining the conflicts brought about by the disregard for Islamic knowledge and the fallout from the Sepoy Revolution. The study depicts varying responses to western education and competing ideologies among Muslims in India and underscores the significance of placing Muslim views in the larger sociopolitical context of colonial India. It also emphasises how critical it is to comprehend Muslim viewpoints on colonial education to dispel myths and promote a nuanced awareness of the historical legacies that continue to influence educational practices in post-colonial cultures.

Comparison of German, British, and French colonial education policies in Cameroon and impacts

Comparison of German, British, and French colonial education policies in Cameroon and impacts

Multi-ethnic societies in transition to independence: the uneven development of colonial schooling in Cyprus and Singapore

ABSTRACT The article seeks to formulate a comparative framework that explains the uneven development of schooling in Cyprus and Singapore during the British colonial rule. It specifically focuses on the moment of transition to independence and on the role played by ideas and the interaction of ideas in the evolution of social institutions. The overall argument put forward is that the divergent ideational and institutional dynamics of schooling in the two settings at the moment of decolonisation were the outcome of the intersections of British colonial education policies, locally-indigenised cultural heritages, and relations with other nation-states in the region. These complex intersections permitted and, at the same time, constrained certain readings and re-readings of the continental European idea of mass schooling over time.

The Mis-education of the African Child: The Evolution of British Colonial Education Policy in Southern Nigeria, 1900–1925

Education did not occupy a primal place in the European colonial project in Africa. The ideology of "civilizing mission", which provided the moral and legal basis for colonial expansion, did little to provide African children with the kind of education that their counterparts in Europe received. Throughout Africa, south of the Sahara, colonial governments made little or no investments in the education of African children. In an attempt to run empire on a shoestring budget, the colonial state in Nigeria provided paltry sums of grants to the missionary groups that operated in the colony and protectorate. This paper explores the evolution of the colonial education system in the Southern provinces of Nigeria, beginning from the year of Britain’s official colonization of Nigeria to 1925 when Britain released an official policy on education in tropical Africa. This paper argues that the colonial state used the school system as a means to exert power over the people. Power was exercised through an education system that limited the political, technological, and economic advancement of the colonial people. The state adopted a curricular that emphasized character formation and vocational training and neglected teaching the students, critical thinking and advanced sciences. The purpose of education was to make loyal and submissive subjects of the state who would serve as a cog in the wheels of the exploitative colonial machine.

Reconstructing Slave Stock

This article examines a neglected example of slavery visualisation by Guyanese artist Stanley Greaves (1934–present). The work is called Slave Stock and is a unique example of abstract constructive sculpture made in 1965 while Greaves was studying at Newcastle University in the UK, where his tutors included Pop artist Richard Hamilton. After winning prizes in Newcastle and Guyana after Greaves’s return in 1968, Slave Stock entered the latter’s National Collection but was mysteriously destroyed sometime in the nineteen seventies. In 2018, over fifty years since its original conception, Greaves reconstructed this major lost work. Drawing on correspondence with the artist, this written reconstruction of Slave Stock locates its production and reception in relation to Greaves’s trajectory, encompassing his early artistic development in the context of British colonial education and Guyana’s ongoing independence struggle, as well as his engagement with transnational modernisms and wider histories of slavery visualisation and memorialisation.

Schools with invisible fences in the British Southern Cameroons, 1916–1961: colonial curriculum and the ‘other’ side of modernist thinking

In this paper, I revisit the popular position in British colonial education literature which suggests there is no evidence that Britain had any predetermined wish to dominate, subvert or control the minds of Africans with an official education policy emanating from Whitehall, the seat of the colonial office. I have used archival data and some critical testimonies from Cameroon to show that British colonial education was experienced and understood differently. Cameroon is relatively unrepresented in the colonial legacy discourse, especially in the context of education. I argue that the curriculum contents and the overall school culture at both the senior elementary and secondary school levels were essentially Eurocentric and therefore served purposes of cultural imperialism. This was not an unintended fallout of curriculum implementation, but a major goal of British colonial education policy initiated at the colonial office and sustained by various colonial administrations. I conclude that a discussion of British colonial education based on policy documents which advocated adaptation, without an emic perspective of their experience with implementation, is likely an unfinished appraisal of Britain’s goal in educating her colonial territories.

Development of British Colonial Education in Malaya, 1816 - 1957

The aim of this study is to discuss the development of education during the British Colonial rule in Malaya. The scope of this study is focussed on four school systems under British colonialists, namely the Malay Vernacular School, Chinese Vernacular School, Tamil Vernacular School, and English Schools and its implications to the society and nation. The introduction of these four school systems is aimed at the economic and political interests of the British in Malaya. The Colonial Education System does not have a National Education Policy and brings many implications to the society and nation. It has caused class and status disparities among the societies and also caused socio-economic differences between races in Malaya. The process of socialization is not achieved among all races in Malaya under the Colonial Education. This study is qualitative and is approached through the library and archival research.

Destination England: Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen and Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage

Although Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen and Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage were written ten years apart they display many similarities. Both of the novels depict female protagonists, Adah and Leila respectively, who were born and bred in former British colonies, namely Nigeria and St. Kitts, who find themselves benefiting from the British colonial education system. Both heroines end up in relations with less qualified and low achiever, irresponsible husbands and are doubly colonised in a sense. The destination of both these female figures is England “the mother country” where they hope to realise dreams, live better lives as preached to them by the colonial education system. These two heroines who also bear children, do reach their geographic destinations and both in the adaptation process break free from their unsuccessful marriage bondage. From this point onward although both do manage to survive in their new homelands, the similarities seem to end. Adah who is more ambitious, builds herself and her children a new life in London, working and studying and adapting well to the new country, Leila on the other hand barely survives. For Adah London does become the land of freedom, achievements and self realisation, but Leila is weighed down by many factors and the new country is different than that she had imagined in many ways such as climate, life style and culture which are also discouraging for quite a number of immigrants arriving in England. Leila feels disillusioned and finds herself constantly yearning for her former home and expressing her wish to return there one day. Buchi Emecheta’s partly autobiographic novel depicts a success story in her desired destination, Caryl Phillips’s novel displays the grim reality of the coin’s other side where the immigrant experiences disillusionment, dissatisfaction in what the mother country provides.

The Ambivalence of an Anglophile Subject in Kam Raslan’s <I>Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato’ Hamid Adventures</I>

This paper focuses on ambivalence, a prominent concept in postcolonial studies and a recurrent theme in an anglophile subject in Kam Raslan’s novel, Confessions of an Old Boy: The Dato’ Hamid Adventures (2007). As a result of ambivalence, the anglophile subject feels alien in his perception of himself and also towards others. The subject is also ambivalent towards his own culture. Using this framework, this article focuses on Kam Raslan’s protagonist, Dato’ Hamid, as an ambivalent anglophile subject. The findings reveal that reverence for the English culture, coupled with a British colonial education is what gives rise to such characters. It is the British education that has indoctrinated English values into the native’s life. The admiration of the anglophile towards the “English” culture can be seen in many aspects, such as language, dress code, behaviour, relationships, lifestyle, etc. All these elements become traits and characteristics of the anglophile. The study reveals the adoption, adaptation and assimilation of English traits and characteristics by the anglophile subject which has caused a sense of ambivalence in his perception of himself and towards the “other.”

Policing young minds: Education and security policy in British Southeast Asia

What factors contributed to the centralization of colonial rule over time? I argue that internal and external threats to the control of territories and populations can lead to the adoption of centralized state institutions, but where institutions already exist centralization may take the form of incremental institutional adaptation rather than wholesale shifts to direct rule. British perceptions of the threat posed by China-driven mobilization amongst overseas Chinese (华侨, huaqiao) evolved over the course of five decades from an external one based on developments in mainland China to an internal threat to British colonial holdings. In response, British colonial education policy shifted from indirect administration of Chinese Schools to more direct methods of control as a way of mitigating this threat. Evidence from the colonies of Malaya, Sarawak, and Singapore demonstrates that the timing and success of changes in British colonial education policy were influenced by local conditions, including the relative size of local Chinese populations and the strength of organized opposition to British reforms. Both international and domestic security conditions interacted to shape British efforts to control Chinese minorities in colonial Southeast Asia.

Colonial education and the shaping of Islamism in Sudan, 1946–1956

This article assesses the role of British colonial education in Condominium Sudan in shaping the mindsets of Sudan’s first generation of Islamists between 1946 and 1956. Drawing on post-colonial theorists such as Nandy and Bhabha, it contends that the experiences of the pioneers of Sudan’s Islamic movement at institutions such as Gordon Memorial College and Hantoub Secondary School moulded their understandings of both ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’. As a result of their colonial education, Islamists deployed discourses concerning both ‘progress’ and ‘cultural authenticity’ that bore remarkable parallels with colonial essentialism, even as they announced a decisive break with the colonial past. Much like the conventional nationalists, they used the space created by the colonial educational institutions to establish an ideological community that transcended the narrow ethnic and regional divides previously fostered by the British. At the same time, Islamists and colonialists alike shared a contempt for Marxists and ‘deculturated’ effendis, and Muslim Brothers’ aspirations to escape the ‘English jahiliyya’, however counter-intuitive this may seem, bore similarities with the worldviews of colonial officials concerned with preventing what they saw to be the excessive impact of urbanization and modern education on Sudan.

Role of British Colonial Education on Reduction of Illiteracy for Wasukuma 1918-1961: A Case of Shinyanga District Tanzania

This study assessed the role of British Colonial Education on the reduction of Illiteracy for Wasukuma of Shinyanga Rural District from 1918-1961. It took place in Shinyanga Rural because for years especially after independence Wasukuma were claimed to be behind in development compared to other ethnic groups such as the Chagga people. From the study conducted, responses given show how illiteracy was one of the challenges these people were facing the reason that made the researcher find out the role of British Colonial Education on a reduction of illiteracy for Wasukuma societies. The objective of this study was to assess the people's perception of the roles of British Colonial Education on the reduction of illiteracy for Wasukuma. Emphasis was put on the positive aspects British colonial education has contributed to illiteracy reduction for Wasukuma and also some few negative aspects of British colonial education are involved in the study. Considering the nature of the study being historical, the researcher employed qualitative research approach by using a case study strategy. The data collection methods included interviews, focus group discussion, documentary review and the use of open-ended questions. The study had a total of 90 respondents where the majority were elders making the total of 70, 5 doctors, 5 secondary school teachers, 5 district administrators who happened to work in colonial and early post-colonial times in Tanganyika and had the colonial experience. Findings revealed that British colonial education had played a great role on illiteracy reduction among Wasukuma societies and other ethnic groups in Tanzania and Africa in general. Study shows that colonial education by the British contributed in educating people on matters such as hygiene, time management, agricultural methods, trade and even primary education which later awakened people on their rights as a free being

Duties of a ‘good citizen’: colonial secondary school textbook policies in late nineteenth-century India

The late nineteenth century, which was marked by the earliest instances of students’ participation in anti-colonial political agitations in the Bengal and Bombay Presidencies, witnessed significant shifts in the British colonial education policies in India. This article highlights the political significance of the Indian child in the British colonial project by investigating a key locus of knowledge production and dissemination – the colonial school, specifically the school curriculum. Against the background of an emerging politicized child, the British colonial state intervened in school curriculum and aimed to thwart the spread of ‘sedition’ among students. The colonial state devised methods to extend greater control over the processes of curriculum selection to combat its anxieties over ‘seditious’ deviant youth and to generate loyal imperial subjects. Textbooks of ‘aggressive character’ were censored and substituted by those imparting lessons on ‘state feeling’ and duties of a ‘good citizen’. I examine colonial school curriculum policies, particularly controversies surrounding a school textbook titled The Citizen of India (1897) written primarily to inculcate ‘state feeling’ and familiarize children to a ‘simple sketch of the duties of a good citizen’. I argue that these curriculum changes were undertaken by the British colonial state with the conscious agenda of re-moulding ‘seditious’ Indian children and youth into governable subject-citizens. To interrogate colonial education as not simply confined to classroom pedagogical relationships but also shaped by its social contexts, I examine the political contestations generated within the Indian public sphere over state-sponsored school textbooks and government policies on school curriculum.

British colonial education policy in Africa

As a result of colonization, the colonizing countries implemented their own form of education within their colonies. Colonizing governments realized that they gained strength over colonized nations not only through physical control but also mental control. This mental control was carried out through education. The colonizer’s educational goal was to expose Africans to a superior culture. Colonizers thought education would bring Africans into the modern world and education would bring them to a higher level of civilization. However the need for skilled native labor by colonizers for economic development and eagerness to propagate Christianity caused colonizers to use education as a tool to achieve social control over African people. Key words: Africa, colonial education, western culture, assimilation, inferiority, superiority.

Schooling ‘Truant’ Tribes

British colonial education in India, promoted under the policy frame of ‘filteration’, barely reached the remote recesses of the empire. Permeation was sluggish and growth uneven. A case in point would be the tribal hinterland of Chhotanagpur in Bengal province. This article shows that while parts of Bengal led colonial India in educational growth, places like Chhotanagpur, in stark contrast to centres such as Calcutta, remained largely untouched. This, despite the fact, that the system was introduced as early as 1839 (as a local project at the behest of the concerned official) in Chhotanagpur. Not only that, the system so introduced also received considerable impetus in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century from the colonial agenda of ‘civilizing’ the ‘barbarians’. For this task, the government usually relied upon the services of missionaries. The efforts of the missionaries, their humanitarian attitude toward the tribals notwithstanding, were ineluctably marred by the constraints of their mission field and prejudiced missionary paradigm. Owing to which, the missionaries were unable to devise a pro-tribal educational policy, thus leading to the tribals receiving the faulty system on their own terms. While the tribals valorized certain aspects of the system, they were, unlike elsewhere, unable to further develop the system through indigenous initiative.

From Pentecostalism to politics: mass literacy and community development in late colonial Northern Ghana

This article takes as its starting point a strike among African trainee literacy workers in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1952. While the existing literature tends to concentrate on the tensions and contradictions in British colonial education policy, this article uses the strike to investigate how these agendas were experienced by, and engendered opposition from, literacy workers on the ground. It argues that, in their efforts to link mass literacy to community development, and to secure legitimacy for their campaigns, colonial officials depended heavily upon the authority of chiefs. This strategy backfired because it ignored both shorterterm instances of chiefly venality, and the longer history of colonial taxation and labour demands which had been enforced on Northern peoples through chiefs. The African trainees went on strike because they were astute in recognising how different forms of educational provision fitted into the re‐ordering of local, regional and national power relations as the Gold Coast approached Independence.

British Colonial Education in Africa: Policy and Practice in the Era of Trusteeship

AbstractHistorians continue to debate the role of the colonial state in the history of Africa and whether and how the state addressed problems of social welfare. In the early twentieth century, plans for Native Education were central to the construed mission of the state to serve as “Trustees for native peoples.” This article surveys the theories, aims, and practice of British education in Africa, focusing on the period between WWI and WWII when the colonial state took an unprecedented role in crafting an education policy for the whole of its African territory. It examines the role of American philanthropy, the controversy of English vs. vernacular language education, the relationship between settler communities and African labor, and African and metropolitan social movements in forming and executing education policy.

Educational borrowing as negotiation: re‐examining the influence of the American black industrial education model on British colonial education in Africa

This study explores the extent to which American educational ideas made an impact on policy‐making and practice of education in British African colonies between the two World Wars. The analysis re‐examines the apparent ‘borrowing’ of American black industrial education models for application in Africa. It is argued that, while the view that Americans were successful in handling racial conflicts by means of education at home carried strong symbolic meaning in the colonial political arena, the ideas themselves were not new. The paper focuses on the motivations and characteristics of the people involved in this political discourse and in transferring American and other models to Africa. By doing this, the paper draws attention to a more complex network of factors that were involved in the transfer of educational policies to British colonies in Africa.

The Concept of British Education Policy in the Colonies 1850–1960

It is common in the literature to refer to British colonial education policy as if it were ‘a settled course adopted and purposefully carried into action’, but in reality it was never like that. Contrary to popular belief, the size and diversity of the empire meant that no one really ruled it in any direct sense. Clearly some kind of authority had to be exercised from London but as Arthur Mayhew said of education policy in the Colonial Empire in 1938: ‘No Secretary of State for the Colonies … [is] anxious to adopt too definite a policy. He will be content with a few assumptions and a statement of general principles. And he will not be surprised if these principles in their local application are adapted with the utmost elasticity to local conditions.’ In the absence of any strong direction from the centre, this paper examines the factors that shaped twentieth century education policy in the 47 crown colonies, protectorates and mandates under the aegis of the Colonial Office in Whitehall. They included the all‐important attitudes of the governor and his senior administrative officers towards education; the status of the director of education; the influence of the Christian missions both in London and in the colonies; denominational rivalry; long‐standing British educational traditions based on social class; the state of the local economy; the attitudes of the European settlers; the advice and status of the London‐based Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies; the influence of the Secretary of State for the Colonies on the government of the day; the attitudes of key senior Colonial Office officials towards education; indigenous pressure groups; special reports and recommendations; war; national rivalry; the so‐called Cold War; post‐war constitutional changes, and the pressure of world opinion as reflected in the League of Nations after 1918 and the United Nations after 1945. Clearly there was great diversity in the ways in which education was developed from one territory to another but only detailed case studies can generate the data for broader and more historically accurate hypotheses about the development of British colonial education as a whole.

Language Policy in British Colonial Education: Evidence from Nineteenth‐Century Hong Kong

This article examines the evolution of language‐in‐education policy in Hong Kong during the first six decades of British rule (1842–1902). In particular, it analyses the changing roles and status of the English and Chinese languages during this formative period in the development of the colony’s education system. The textual and statistical data presented in the article provide a corrective to the claim that the British imposed English on their colonial subjects and in the process rode roughshod over the indigenous languages. The evidence suggests that Hong Kong’s education system provided opportunities for native students to attend purely Chinese schools, purely English schools or mixed‐medium schools. Although the British apparently attached more importance to English teaching, they were generally at pains to emphasise that English should not be studied at the expense of Chinese. The findings indicate that language policy (be it Chinese or English in orientation) was always tied in some way to Britain’s political and economic interests in the region.