द ब्यूटीफुल ट्री: १८वीं सदी में भारत की स्वदेशी गुरुकुल शिक्षा (धर्मपाल)

as late as 1834, ‘the curriculum in the better class of national schools was limited in the main to religious instruction, reading, writing and arithmetic: in some country schools writing was excluded for fear of evil consequences.’¹¹ The major impetus to the Day school movement came from what was termed the ‘Peel’s Act of 1802’. This Act required the employer of young children ‘to provide, during the first four years of the seven years of apprenticeship, competent instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic, and to secure the presence of his apprentice at religious teaching for one hour every Sunday and attendance at a place of worship on that day.’¹² ‘But the Act was unpopular’, and its ‘practical effect...was not great.’¹³ At about the same time, however, the monitorial method of teaching used by Joseph Lancaster (and also by Andrew Bell, supposedly borrowed from India)¹⁴ came into practice and greatly helped advance the cause of popular education. The number of those attending school was estimated at around 40,000 in 1792, at 6,74,883 in 1818, and 21,44,377 in 1851. The total number of schools, public as well as private in 1801 was stated to be 3,363. By stages, it reached a total of 46,114 in 1851.¹⁵ In the beginning, ‘the teachers were seldom competent’, and ‘Lancaster insinuates that the men were not only ignorant but drunken.’¹⁶ As regards the number of years of schooling, Dobbs writes that ‘allowing for irregularity of attendance, the average length of school life rises on a favourable estimate from about one year in 1835 to about two years in 1851.’¹⁷ The fortunes of English Public schools are said to have fallen strikingly during the eighteenth century. In January 1797, the famous school at Shrewsbury, for instance, did not have ‘above three or four boys.’ After some major reorganisation, it had about 20 pupils a year later.¹⁸ In public schools like Eton, teaching consisted of writing and arithmetic (a number of English and 10