'Scotland’s Madras College' - by K J S Chatrath

 

Madras College at St. Andrews in Scotland was founded in 1832

Visiting St Andrews, near Edinburgh in Scotland, a few years back, I suddenly came face to face with a board on which the words "Madras College" were written. A memorial plaque nearby gave some details about this institution, its founder and the Madras connection.

Reverend Dr Andrew Bell (1753-1853) was the founder of Madras College at St Andrews. Born in St. Andrews, he was a priest and an educationist. In February 1787, he came to Madras, where he stayed for 10 years. He became chaplain to a number of British regiments and gave a course of lectures.

While serving in Madras, he developed a form of schooling where the older pupils taught the younger ones. He claimed to have seen some local children in Madras teaching others alphabets by drawing in sand and decided to develop a similar method, putting bright children in charge of those who were less bright. In Bell’s system, a schoolmaster would teach a small group of brighter or older pupils the basic lessons, and each of them would then repeat the lesson to another group of children.

When he returned to England from Madras, he introduced his Madras or "monitorial system" as an economical system of mass education. The idea spread not only in the UK but "Madras" schools came up in Canada and Australia as well. He ended his career as prebendary of Westminster Abbey, where he lies buried. The inscription on his tomb read, "The Author of the Madras System of Education."

 Madras College at St Andrews is not a college as we in India understand; it is a school. The present school was founded in 1832, from a large endowment from Dr Andrew Bell. The system put into operation by him survives and is practised in Madras College today, in the form of "Peer Tutors."

 Coming back to Madras, Military Male Orphan Asylum for the illegitimate and orphaned sons of British officers and soldiers who had died in service and whose mothers were Indian, was opened in 1789 at Egmore. Dr Andrew Bell was the first director and superintendent of the asylum from 1789-1796. At the time of his appointment, the system of teaching was inadequate and this lead to his founding the Madras System of Education — a "monitorial" method, whereby older pupils instructed those younger, in addition to receiving instruction from their seniors. The first monitor was a boy named John Frisken, who later became the printer of Madras Courier. In the report of Madras Asylum (1796), Dr Bell recommended that the experiment, which had been attended with such success in that school, should be tried "in every charity or free school, and the generality of public schools and academics."

Bell wrote the following books about the system of education he developed, giving details of the asylum: An Analysis of the Experiment in Education, made at Egmore (Madras edition 3 (1807); The Madras School, with facts, proofs and illustrations (1808); and Mutual Tuition and Moral Discipline.

In March 2003, Madras College at St Andrews commemorated the 250^th birth anniversary of the Rev. Bell.

St George’s School on Poonamallee High Road in Chennai is the oldest school in India following this pattern of education left by the British. This school grew out of Military (later Madras) Male Orphan Asylum founded in 1789. I went to this school towards the end of 2010 to know more about this wonderful teacher. Unfortunately, I could not get any further information about Dr Bell.

 

          (This was earlier published in The Tribune, Chandigarh in its edition dated  March 13, 2011)