Friday 6 August, 2010

Education, did you say?

Macaulay apparently said many things; one among those was 
"..We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population."
More interesting than the fact that this strategy has been reasonably successful, is the fact that he managed to identify such a problem and a solution thereof.
When was the last time you looked at a bunch of people and pondered ways of educating them because you thought they were savages in relation to whatever little you know; To uplift the down-trodden. To lead from the darkness into the light. Darkness is relative. Darkness is what you do not understand. if you want to lead people from what you do not understand into the comfort of what you do, so that you can then start weaving and selling them clothes made of a moral fiber that you are comfortable with, you are displaying your fear and ignorance cloaked in a thin but shiny coat of your arrogance.

The fact that an education campaign works does not vindicate it. charity is performed by people who wish to reassure themselves that they are right.

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