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MADRAS MISCELLANY
The High School of Madras
S. MUTHIAH
Was there an institution called the High School of Madras, wonders M.T. Salim. There most certainly was; in fact, it was the seed from which the University of Madras grew.
Modern education, Western education — the educational format that is still with us — had its beginnings in the early 19th Century, mission-established junior schools and orphanages. But it really took off only during the governorship of the legendary Thomas Munro (1820-27) who established a School Book Society, surveyed the existing schools in the Presidency, and set up a Directorate of Public Instruction to establish a school in every Collectorate and Taluk headquarters. The DPI began its work by establishing a training school for teachers in what is now the DPI office and which was then the College of Fort St. George campus.
Macaulay’s Minute on Education which the Government of India pronounced as its policy on March 7, 1835, took education in India — and Madras — to the next step.
A Committee of Native Education was established in Madras in 1836 as a consequence, but could not see eye-to-eye with the Governments of Madras and India.
The arrival of Governor Lord John Elphinstone in 1838 provided the impetus for Education in Madras. When Advocate General George Norton presented the Governor on November 1, 1839, a petition signed by 70,000 “native inhabitants,” which read in part, “We descend from the oldest native subjects of British Power in India, but…where amongst us are the collegiate institutions which, founded for these generous subjects, adorn the two sister presidencies?” Elphinstone acted promptly.
In six weeks he announced a University Board to set up a High School for the study of English Literature, a regional language, Philosophy and Science, as well as a College to which the high school students would move for higher studies in these subjects.
A preparatory school was almost immediately established in Edinburgh House, Egmore (it later moved to Popham’s Broadway) to prepare students for the High School which opened on April 14, 1841 in D’Monte House, now the Chief Magistrate’s Court in Egmore.
When the School was declared open by Elphinstone, he declared, “This is the dawn of a new era, rather than the opening of a new school.”
The first Principal was Eyre Burton Powell and the subjects taught were English Prose and Grammar, Arithmetic and Algebra, Moral Science, History, Mechanics, Natural Philosophy, the South Indian Vernaculars and, later, Political Economy.
Graduates were called ‘Proficients’ and the first Proficient was C.V. Ranganatha Sastri, who went on to become a Judge of the Small Causes Court. Other early Proficients included T. Madhava Rao and A. Seshiah Sastri, both later knighted, Basil Lovery, later Principal of Pachaiyappa’s College, and T. Muthuswami Aiyar, the first Indian High Court judge.
The faculty included Norton, J.D. Mayne, another barrister, and Talboys Wheeler, a chronicler of the historical.
The High School was elevated to a college in April 1853 and, further expanded, was named Presidency College in 1855.
The first college in South India, Presidency is from where the University of Madras sprouted in 1857, the University even occupying a part of the College’s premises for a while as its first home.
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