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Three bells recall Bell of Madras
MADRAS IN Oregon in the United States I have written of in this column in the past (Miscellany, April 16, 2001). And that I thought would be the end of the subject of places called Madras elsewhere. But an e-mail out of the blue, asking for information, left me stunned - but also reminded me of a significant contribution Madras made to Britain 200 years ago.
The stunning surprise was that a bit of Madras in Britain that I had thought long extinct appears to be still flourishing. This is The Madras College in St. Andrew's, Scotland, an institution founded in 1833 to commemorate a significant Madras contribution. Anyone from Madras visiting St. Andrew's, for the golf if nothing else, will, I am sure, get a warm welcome if he or she visits the school in South Street. And there he or she will discover three bells on the coat-of-arms of the school, in effect a punning three cheers for the founder of the school, the Rev. Andrew Bell D.D. (Hon.), L.L.D. (Hon.). Andrew Bell is the person whose contribution to Britain out of his Madras experience earned him a tomb in Westminster Abbey with the most significant remembrance of our city in that historic church, the inscription on the tomb reading. "The Author of the Madras System of Education". Indeed, that system brought about a revolutionary change in teaching methods in Britain.
Later this month, on the 27th, The Madras College will commemorate the 250th birth anniversary of the Rev. Bell. I wonder whether St. George's School on Poonamallee High Road, the oldest school in India following the pattern of education left by the British and which the great majority of schools in the country are heirs to, will remember the occasion. For St. George's grew out of the Military (later Madras) Male Orphan Asylum founded in 1789, with Bell as its Superintendent, and it was in it that he experimented with the system of teaching that he was to take back and spread in Britain.
Bell, more a teacher than a priest, arrived in Madras in 1787 on his way to Calcutta and during his stopover delivered a series of public lecture-demonstrations on scientific subjects. So impressed by him were his audiences that they persuaded him to stay and found him several opportunities to earn a living from teaching and preaching. Amongst those he taught were a group of fatherless children being looked after by St. Mary's in the Fort; the father were British soldiers who had died in service, the mothers Indian. It was to formalise their care and education that Bell suggested the establishment of a male Asylum as both an orphanage and school. And so was born the Male Orphan Asylum, to join the Female Orphan Asylum that preceded it. Both, when they moved out of the Fort, found a new home in the Egmore Redoubt, not long before a small fort guarding the entrance to the city from Poonamallee and later to be the site of the Egmore Railway Station. This Egmore connection was one he did not forget. On his return to Scotland in 1796, Bell bought himself a small estate, named it `Egmore' and called himself. `Dr. Andrew Bell of Egmore'!
It was while superintending the Asylum and exploring Madras that he discovered how children were taught in a traditional Tamil school. He saw a teacher get an older boy to trace in the sand letters to make words and he later saw this older boy pass on the learning in the same way to smaller boys. With the shortage of teachers the Asylum was facing, it seemed the best way to teach the largest number. And he found the right older boy in an eight-year-old, John Frisken, who was later to become the printer of the Madras Courier. When Frisken began teaching the beginners their letters in the sand, there was born the monitorial system of education, older students teaching younger ones. Back home, calling it the Madras System, Bell wrote prolifically about it till St. Botolph's in Algate, London, adopted the method. Soon, others followed and by 1816 the System was being followed in hundreds of schools in Britain and tens of thousands of students were learning from older students.
The System may not be followed today, but many of Bell's ideas, conveyed in his numerous writings, have come to stay - not least a monitorial system in public schools, even if the monitors are now meant to be more mentors. Most of these ideas grew out of his Madras experience. No wonder he wanted Madras remembered in the name of the school he founded.
By S MUTHIAH
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