Vocational training and class divisions of the Orient.
Oriental Education.—The nations of the ancient Orient—Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, China, India, and Persia—may be said to represent the next higher stage in civilization. Their systems of education prepare mostly for vocations, and are not sufficiently advanced to undertake a training for manhood or citizenship. But since a division of labor has now been evolved, the training has become more clearly differentiated and fits for specific occupations. In this way, class divisions, or even castes, have generally arisen in society, and the young people are educated according to the position in life they desire, or are required to fill. As an illustration of this stage of development, we may consider somewhat in detail the social environment and education of India.
Mystic religion and caste system in India.
India: Its Religion and Castes.—In India, largely as a result of the debilitating climate, there was formulated about 1200 B. C. a dreamy philosophy, according to which nothing except Brahma, the one universal spirit, really exists. While men would seem to be temporarily allowed a separate existence of their own, it was held that they should remain inactive as far as possible and seek an ultimate absorption into the great Eternal Spirit. Although somewhat modified by the infusion of Buddhism, between 500 B. C. and 500 A. D., and by the British occupation of the peninsula during the nineteenth century, this mystic and static religion still dominates in India. Connected with it is the caste system, by which the people are divided into four hereditary classes. These are (1) the brahmins, or sacerdotal class, which includes all those trained for law, medicine, teaching, and other professional occupations; (2) the warriors, or military and administrative caste; (3) the industrial group; and (4) the sudras, or menial caste. Altogether outside the social order are the pariahs, or outcasts. The caste system is exceedingly strict. One may fall into a lower caste, but he cannot rise, and loss of caste by one person in a family will degrade all the rest.
The Hindu Education.—Hence Hindu education has always endeavored to fill the pupils with the tenets of their religion, and so prepare them for absorption into the Infinite, rather than for activities in this life, and to preserve the caste system and keep all within the sphere of their occupation. The three upper castes are, therefore, Knowledge of sacred books and training in laws and traditions. supposed to gain a knowledge of certain sacred works, especially the four Vedas or books of ‘knowledge,’ the six Angas on philosophical and scientific subjects, and the Code of Manu, which is a collection of traditional customs; but few, outside the brahmin class, are ever allowed to take advantage of this opportunity. The warriors are expected to pay more attention to martial exercises, and the industrial caste to acquire through apprenticeship the arts necessary for its hereditary occupations. Sudras, pariahs, and women are generally allowed no education. Except the sudras, all the castes obtain elementary education from a study of the laws, traditions, and customs of the country through the medium of the family, and more recently through village schools held in the open air ([Fig. 2]). The higher education is largely carried on in brahminic colleges, called parishads, and, as also in the case of the elementary work, the teachers have to be brahmins. Since all learning has been preserved by tradition, the chief methods of instruction are those of memorizing and imitation. Even the later texts are so written as to be easily committed, and the lines are sung aloud by the pupils until they have memorized them. Writing is learned by imitating the teacher’s copy on the sand with a stick, then on palm leaves with a stylus ([Fig. 2]), and finally on plane leaves with ink.
Much traditional learning, but no progress results.
Effect of the Hindu Education.—Hence, among the Hindus education is forbidden to ninety-five per cent of the population, and, as far as it does exist, it is a mere stuffing of the memory. It concerns itself but little with mental culture or with preparation for real living. The brahmins have handed down considerable traditional learning, grammar, phonetics, rhetoric, logic, ‘Arabic’ notation, algebra, astronomy, and medicine, but new knowledge of any sort is barred. The Hindus still plow with sticks of wood, and their crops are harvested and threshed by devices equally primitive. They bake bricks, work metals, and weave cloth, but with the same kind of appliances that were used by their remote ancestors. Until recently, they have been greatly lacking in ambition, self-reliance, and personal responsibility, and have not yet come to any feeling of solidarity or national unity. To them prosperity and progress are foreign ideas.
Oriental education in bondage to the past.
India as Typical of the Orient.—The other countries of the ancient Orient never fixed their social classes in so hard and fast a manner, and have never included so elaborate a philosophy among the products of their culture. But India may well be considered broadly typical of the stage of development in the Orient. Certain common features appear in the education of all the nations there. In the system of each, the classes below the sacerdotal or priestly are given little intellectual education, and the women none at all, but both are trained by apprenticeship in their vocations. Actual schools, both elementary and higher, have been instituted; and the latter, except in China, are conducted at temples or priestly colleges by members of the sacerdotal class. The educational content is naturally traditional. It is, for the most part, ensured against change by being embalmed in sacred books, such as the Vedas. The educational method consists largely in the memorizing of the test and imitation of the copy set, and little attempt is made to give a reason for the customs and traditional knowledge taught. Hence, while individuality has begun to emerge, it is suppressed by every agency possible; and, although these peoples have largely overcome the primitive enslavement to nature and the present, they are completely in bondage to the past.
