English Education Act 1835
The English Education Act was a legislative Act of the Council of India in 1835 giving effect to a decision in 1835 by William Bentinck, 4th Duke of Portland, the then Governor-General of British India to reallocate funds the East India Company was required by the British Parliament to spend on education and literature in India. Formerly, they had supported traditional Muslim and Hindu education and the publication of literature in the native learned tongues (Sanskrit and Arabic); henceforward they were to support establishments teaching a Western curriculum with English as the language of instruction. Together with other measures promoting English as the language of administration and of the higher law courts (replacing Persian), this led eventually to English becoming one of the languages of India, rather than simply the native tongue of its foreign rulers.
In discussions leading up to the Act Thomas Babington Macaulay produced his famous Memorandum on (Indian)Education which was scathing on the inferiority of native (particularly Hindu) culture and learning. The Act itself however took a less negative attitude to traditional education, and was soon succeeded by further measures based upon the provision of adequate funding for both approaches. Vernacular language education, however continued to receive little funding.
Read more about English Education Act 1835: British Support For Indian Learning, Macaulay’s “Minute Upon Indian Education”, The Act, Opposition in London Suppressed
Famous quotes containing the words english, education and/or act:
“Chaucer’s remarkably trustful and affectionate character appears in his familiar, yet innocent and reverent, manner of speaking of his God. He comes into his thought without any false reverence, and with no more parade than the zephyr to his ear.... There is less love and simple, practical trust in Shakespeare and Milton. How rarely in our English tongue do we find expressed any affection for God! Herbert almost alone expresses it, “Ah, my dear God!””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There are words in that letter to his wife, respecting the education of his daughters, which deserve to be framed and hung over every mantelpiece in the land. Compare this earnest wisdom with that of Poor Richard.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They act as if they supposed that to be very sanguine about the general improvement of mankind is a virtue that relieves them from taking trouble about any improvement in particular.”
—John Morley [1st Viscount Morley Of Blackburn] (1838–1923)