**Learning Objectives**<\/p>\n
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
\n– Describe Bailey’s educational philosophy and its roots in evangelical and pedagogical movements
\n– Trace the development of the village school network across Travancore
\n– Explain the significance of CMS College, Kottayam, as the first English college in Kerala
\n– Analyse the radical implications of female education in 19th century Kerala
\n– Evaluate the impact of missionary education on literacy rates and social mobility<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 8.1 Philosophy of Vernacular Education<\/p>\n
Benjamin Bailey’s approach to education was shaped by the intersection of evangelical conviction and practical common sense. For Bailey and his CMS colleagues, education was never an end in itself. It was, first and foremost, a means of enabling people to read the Bible. The evangelical insistence on personal engagement with scripture meant that literacy was not a luxury but a spiritual necessity. Every believer, regardless of social status or gender, should be able to encounter the word of God directly, without depending on the mediation of a priest or the interpretation of an educated elite.<\/p>\n
This conviction had radical implications. In a society where literacy was largely confined to elite males, the insistence that all people should read challenged fundamental assumptions about the distribution of knowledge and power. If a Pulaya labourer, an Ezhava farmer, or a Syrian Christian woman could read the Bible for herself, then the traditional hierarchies that reserved textual knowledge for high-caste men were called into question. Bailey may not have articulated the social implications of his educational work in explicitly egalitarian terms, but they were inherent in the project.<\/p>\n
Bailey’s educational philosophy also reflected the influence of the British Sunday school movement and the monitorial system of education developed by Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell. The monitorial system, which used older or more advanced students to teach younger ones under the supervision of a single teacher, was designed to provide basic education at low cost to large numbers of students. It was well-suited to the mission context, where resources were limited and the demand for education was growing. Bailey adapted this system to local conditions, training monitors who could extend the reach of the mission schools into villages where a European teacher would never set foot.<\/p>\n
Crucially, Bailey insisted on vernacular education. Unlike some colonial educators who emphasised English as the medium of instruction, Bailey believed that children should learn to read first in their mother tongue. This was partly a practical judgment\u2014it is easier to learn to read in a language one already speaks\u2014and partly a theological one, rooted in the conviction that God’s word should be accessible in every language. But it also reflected a respect for Malayalam and for the cultural integrity of the students. Bailey was not trying to turn Indian children into little Englishmen; he was trying to equip them to engage with texts, ideas, and opportunities while remaining rooted in their own linguistic and cultural context.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 8.2 Establishment of Village Schools: The “Kottayam System”<\/p>\n
The expansion of mission education beyond the Kottayam compound was one of Bailey’s most significant achievements. Beginning in the early 1820s and accelerating through the 1830s and 1840s, the CMS established a network of village schools across the Travancore region. These schools, often housed in simple buildings attached to Syrian Christian churches or mission outstations, brought basic education within reach of thousands of children who would otherwise have had no access to formal learning.<\/p>\n
The “Kottayam System,” as the mission’s educational network came to be known, operated on principles of local responsibility and central supervision. Each village school was managed locally, often by the Syrian Christian congregation, which provided a building and identified students. The CMS provided trained teachers, textbooks produced by Bailey’s press, and a curriculum that combined basic literacy and numeracy with biblical instruction. Regular inspections by missionary supervisors maintained standards and ensured that the schools were actually functioning\u2014no small challenge in a context where paper qualifications were unknown and accountability was difficult to enforce.<\/p>\n
The curriculum was basic but effective. Children learned the Malayalam alphabet, progressed through the graded readers that Bailey had produced, and mastered the elements of arithmetic. Religious instruction formed a significant component of the school day, with Bible stories, catechism memorisation, and hymn singing occupying substantial time. For the missionaries, this religious content was the whole point of the enterprise; for many parents, it was an acceptable price to pay for the valuable skills their children were acquiring.<\/p>\n
The scale of the network expanded rapidly. By the 1830s, there were dozens of village schools operating across Travancore. By the time of Bailey’s departure in 1850, the number had grown considerably further, and thousands of children had passed through the mission’s educational system. These numbers, while small in relation to the total population, represented a significant expansion of educational access, particularly for communities that had previously been excluded from formal learning.<\/p>\n
The village schools did more than teach literacy and numeracy. They created a demand for books, providing a market for the output of Bailey’s press and stimulating the development of Malayalam print culture. They produced a class of literate young people who could serve as teachers, catechists, and community leaders. And they established education as a normal and desirable part of childhood, laying the cultural groundwork for the mass literacy that would eventually characterise Kerala.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 8.3 The CMS College, Kottayam: First English College in Kerala<\/p>\n
While the village schools provided basic education, the CMS also recognised the need for higher-level instruction that could train indigenous leadership for the church and provide advanced education for those who sought it. This need led to the establishment of CMS College, Kottayam, which has a strong claim to being the first English college in Kerala and one of the earliest institutions of Western-style higher education in India.<\/p>\n
The origins of the college lay in the “Old Seminary” that had been established in the early years of the mission with the support of Colonel Munro. Initially conceived as a theological training institution for Syrian Christian clergy, the seminary gradually expanded its scope to include a broader curriculum. By the 1830s, under Bailey’s influence and that of his colleagues, the institution was offering instruction in English, history, geography, mathematics, and natural philosophy alongside theological subjects.<\/p>\n
The introduction of English education was a significant strategic decision. Bailey had championed vernacular education for the masses, but he also recognised that advanced study required access to the wider world of knowledge that English opened up. English was not only the language of the colonial administration but also the language of science, philosophy, and international discourse. Students who mastered English gained access to opportunities that would otherwise be closed to them.<\/p>\n
The college curriculum was ambitious. Students studied English literature and composition, the history of Britain and India, geography, arithmetic and algebra, geometry, and the elements of natural science. Theological instruction remained central, with courses in biblical studies, church history, and Christian doctrine. The medium of instruction was initially mixed\u2014some subjects taught in English, others in Malayalam\u2014and gradually shifted toward English as students’ proficiency increased.<\/p>\n
The student body was drawn primarily, though not exclusively, from the Syrian Christian community. For these students, CMS College offered a path to employment in the colonial administration, in mission institutions, or in the emerging modern sectors of the economy. It also exposed them to ideas and perspectives that challenged traditional assumptions and opened new intellectual horizons. The college became, in effect, a centre of modernity in central Travancore, producing graduates who would go on to play significant roles in the religious, educational, and political life of Kerala.<\/p>\n
The buildings of CMS College, some of which survive today, were constructed gradually over the decades. The architecture reflected a blend of local and European styles\u2014practical adaptations to the Kerala climate with features that recalled the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. The college compound, adjacent to the mission church and the printing press, formed a campus that embodied the interconnectedness of the mission’s educational, religious, and literary work.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 8.4 Curriculum Development: Combining Western and Indigenous Knowledge<\/p>\n
Bailey’s approach to curriculum was pragmatic rather than ideological. He believed in providing useful knowledge\u2014skills and information that would serve students in their lives and work. This meant combining what was valuable from the Western tradition with what was relevant from the Indian context.<\/p>\n
The Western elements of the curriculum included English language and literature, which opened access to a global tradition of learning; mathematics and science, which provided tools for understanding and manipulating the natural world; and history and geography, which situated students in a broader temporal and spatial context than the local horizon. These subjects represented a significant departure from traditional Indian education, which had focused heavily on religious texts and classical languages.<\/p>\n
But Bailey did not simply import an English curriculum and impose it on Indian students. The textbooks he produced were written with Malayalam-speaking students in mind, using local examples and addressing local concerns. Geography lessons included information about Kerala and India alongside accounts of distant lands. History instruction covered Indian history as well as British and European history. The goal was not to replace Indian knowledge with Western knowledge but to expand students’ intellectual horizons while remaining grounded in their own context.<\/p>\n
The inclusion of Malayalam language and literature in the curriculum was particularly significant. Bailey, the translator and printer, understood that a language gains status and capability through systematic study and use in formal education. By teaching Malayalam as a subject\u2014its grammar, its literature, its expressive possibilities\u2014the mission schools contributed to the elevation of the vernacular, countering the colonial tendency to denigrate Indian languages in favour of English.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 8.5 Female Education: Breaking Barriers<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most radical aspect of Bailey’s educational work was the inclusion of girls. In early 19th century Travancore, female literacy was vanishingly rare. Women of all communities were expected to manage households and raise children; formal education was considered unnecessary at best and inappropriate at worst. The idea that girls should learn to read and write challenged deeply held assumptions about gender roles and the proper ordering of society.<\/p>\n
Bailey and his CMS colleagues believed otherwise. The evangelical conviction that all souls were equal before God, and that all believers should read scripture for themselves, applied to women as well as men. If the Bible was to be accessible to all, then girls must be taught to read. This logic led the mission to establish schools for girls alongside those for boys, creating educational opportunities that had simply not existed before.<\/p>\n
The obstacles were considerable. Many families were reluctant to send daughters to school, viewing education as irrelevant to their future roles as wives and mothers. The logistics of providing instruction for girls were complicated by norms of gender segregation\u2014female students needed female teachers, and the pool of literate women from whom such teachers could be drawn was tiny. The curriculum for girls often emphasised domestic skills alongside literacy, reflecting the gendered expectations of both the missionaries and the local community.<\/p>\n
Despite these challenges, the mission’s girls’ schools grew, albeit more slowly than the boys’ schools. By the 1840s, a network of female schools existed alongside the larger network of male schools, and a small but growing number of Syrian Christian women were acquiring literacy. The long-term implications were profound. Educated women married educated men and raised educated children, creating a virtuous cycle of intergenerational literacy that contributed to Kerala’s subsequent educational achievements. The daughters and granddaughters of those first girl students would go on to become teachers, nurses, and community leaders, participating in the transformation of women’s roles in Kerala society.<\/p>\n
It would be anachronistic to portray Bailey as a modern feminist. His views on gender were conventional by the standards of his time, and the education he offered girls was shaped by assumptions about their proper sphere. But the logic of universal literacy, once set in motion, had implications that went beyond anything the missionaries intended. The girl who learned to read the Bible could also read newspapers, political pamphlets, and literary works. The skills she acquired in the mission school could be turned to purposes the missionaries never imagined.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 8.6 Teacher Training Programmes<\/p>\n
A sustainable educational system requires teachers. The CMS mission could not rely indefinitely on European missionaries to staff its growing network of schools; it needed to develop a cadre of Indian teachers who could carry the work forward. Bailey understood this and invested significant effort in teacher training.<\/p>\n
The training of teachers took place primarily at the Kottayam compound, where promising graduates of the village schools could receive further instruction and practical experience. The curriculum for teacher trainees included advanced study of the subjects they would teach, as well as instruction in pedagogical methods. Trainees observed experienced teachers, practiced under supervision, and gradually assumed responsibility for their own classrooms.<\/p>\n
The monitorial system, mentioned earlier, served as a form of teacher training as well as a cost-saving measure. Older students who served as monitors gained teaching experience that could lead to employment as full teachers. For many young men from modest backgrounds, the path from village school student to monitor to teacher represented a route to secure employment and respected status\u2014a form of social mobility that would have been unavailable through traditional channels.<\/p>\n
The Indian teachers trained by the mission were crucial to its expansion. They could work in villages where no European missionary could live. They understood local customs and could navigate social complexities that baffled foreigners. They cost far less to employ than European missionaries, making the economics of mass education feasible. And they represented the indigenisation of the educational enterprise\u2014the gradual transfer of responsibility from foreign missionaries to local Christians.<\/p>\n
Some of these teachers became significant figures in their own right, though their names are less well remembered than those of the missionaries. They authored textbooks, supervised networks of schools, and trained subsequent generations of teachers. Their lives and work represent an important dimension of the mission’s educational legacy\u2014one that deserves greater scholarly attention.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 8.7 Impact on Literacy Rates in Travancore<\/p>\n
Measuring the impact of Bailey’s educational work on literacy rates in 19th century Travancore is challenging. Systematic census data for the period is limited, and literacy was defined and measured in various ways. Yet the broad contours of change are clear, and they are remarkable.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the 19th century, literacy in Travancore was confined to a tiny elite. By the end of the century, literacy rates, while still low by modern standards, were significantly higher than in most other regions of India. The Syrian Christian community, in particular, had achieved levels of literacy\u2014including female literacy\u2014that were exceptional in the Indian context. The foundations for Kerala’s 20th century educational achievements, including the highest literacy rates in independent India, were laid in this period.<\/p>\n
The mechanism by which mission education contributed to rising literacy was not simply the direct instruction of students. The mission schools created a demand for literacy that extended beyond the classroom. Literate parents were more likely to teach their children to read, even without formal schooling. Printed materials\u2014books, tracts, periodicals\u2014provided incentives to acquire and maintain literacy. The association of literacy with economic opportunity and social status encouraged families to invest in education. Over time, a culture of literacy developed, particularly within the Christian community, that became self-sustaining.<\/p>\n
The economic implications of rising literacy were significant. Literate workers could access better-paying employment in the colonial administration, in commercial firms, and in the mission’s own institutions. The connection between education and economic advancement, once established, created a powerful incentive for families to send children to school. Education became, in economic terms, an investment in human capital\u2014a concept that would not be formalised until the 20th century but was understood intuitively by parents making decisions about their children’s futures.<\/p>\n
The social implications were equally profound. Literacy opened access to new ideas, new identities, and new forms of community. A literate population could engage with print culture, participating in the circulation of information and opinion that constituted an emerging public sphere. The political consequences of this development\u2014the formation of an educated, articulate middle class with aspirations for self-government\u2014would become apparent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Kerala became a centre of political reform movements.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### The Legacy of Educational Access<\/p>\n
Bailey’s educational work is best understood not as the imposition of an alien system but as the expansion of opportunity within a society that was already changing. The demand for education existed; the mission provided supply. The skills that students acquired\u2014literacy, numeracy, English\u2014were genuinely valuable in the context of 19th century Kerala. The opportunities that education opened were real, even if they were unequally distributed and shaped by colonial power relations.<\/p>\n
The lasting significance of Bailey’s educational revolution lies in its demonstration that mass education was possible in India\u2014that children from ordinary families, including girls, could learn to read and write, and that the benefits of education could extend across communities and generations. This demonstration, once made, could not be unmade. The trajectory from Bailey’s first village school to Kerala’s near-universal literacy was long and complex, shaped by many factors beyond the mission’s control. But the journey began, in significant part, with the schools that Bailey and his colleagues established in the 1820s and nurtured for three decades.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Key Takeaways**<\/p>\n
– Bailey’s educational philosophy combined evangelical conviction about Bible reading with practical strategies for mass instruction, particularly the monitorial system.
\n– The “Kottayam System” of village schools expanded educational access across Travancore, bringing basic literacy to communities previously excluded from formal learning.
\n– CMS College, Kottayam, established as the first English college in Kerala, provided higher education and trained indigenous leadership for the church and society.
\n– Female education, though limited by the norms of the time, represented a radical departure from tradition and laid foundations for Kerala’s subsequent achievements in women’s literacy.
\n– Teacher training programmes created a cadre of Indian educators who sustained and expanded the educational enterprise beyond missionary control.
\n– The cumulative impact of mission education contributed to a culture of literacy that distinguished Kerala from other regions of India and persisted long after Bailey’s time.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Discussion Questions**<\/p>\n
1. Why did Bailey insist on vernacular education rather than English-only instruction? What were the advantages and limitations of this approach?
\n2. Consider the radical nature of female education in 19th century Kerala. What motivated the missionaries to teach girls, and what were the long-term consequences?
\n3. How did the relationship between education and economic opportunity shape the demand for schooling in Travancore?
\n4. In what ways was the “Kottayam System” an indigenous adaptation rather than a simple transplant of British educational models?<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Primary Source: Bailey on the Purpose of Education**<\/p>\n
*”We do not seek to make Englishmen of these children, but to make them good Christians and useful members of their own society. Let them learn to read the Word of God in their mother tongue, and let them acquire such knowledge as will fit them for the duties of their station, whatever that may be. Education, rightly understood, is not the privilege of the few but the birthright of all who bear the image of their Creator.”*<\/p>\n
*(CMS Archives, C I1\/M8, Bailey to Secretary, 15 June 1832. Spelling and punctuation modernised.)*<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Further Reading**<\/p>\n
Frykenberg, Robert Eric. (2008). *Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present*. Oxford University Press. (See chapters on education and mission schools.)<\/p>\n
Jeffrey, Robin. (1992). *Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became a ‘Model’*. Palgrave Macmillan. (For the long-term trajectory of literacy and social development in Kerala.)<\/p>\n
Kawashima, Koji. (1998). *Missionaries and a Hindu State: Travancore, 1858-1936*. Oxford University Press. (Though focused on a slightly later period, provides essential context for understanding mission-state relations in education.)<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
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