Schools and moral education which one is more effective

By about the end of the 6th century BC, the Vedic rituals and sacrifices had gradually developed into a highly elaborate cult that profited the priests but antagonized an increasing section of the people. Education became generally confined to the Brahmans, and the upanayana was being gradually discarded by the non-Brahmans. The formalism and exclusiveness of the Brahmanic system was largely responsible for the rise of two new religious orders, Buddhism and Jainism. Neither of them recognized the authority of the Vedas, and both challenged the exclusive claims of the Brahmans to priesthood. They taught through the common language of the people and gave education to all, irrespective of caste, creed, or sex. The Introduction of the Madrasa system of education also gave a different direction to the education system of the country. The Madrasa is an institution of learning, where Islamic sciences including literary and philosophical ones are taught.

The Madrasas in the present-day South Asia are bearers of the remarkable revival that Islamic religious education witnessed in colonial India during the late nineteenth century. This renewal began in particular earnestness with the establishment of the Dar-ul-Uloom Madrasa at Deoband in 1867. The invasion of the British colonial rulers in India ushered in the Christian form of education in the country. There are several missionary schools still operating in the country. Christian missionaries were some of the most influential actors in colonial India. Yet they only began working recently in relation to larger British influence in the subcontinent. Missionaries were influential in the debate over sati and the subsequent outlaw of its practice. Protestant encounters with Hinduism and Islam were defined by the rhetoric of ‘heathen’ and ‘unbelievers’, as missionaries derided the ‘idolatry’ of Hinduism and ‘bigotry’ of Islam. Some of the first mission schools established was in the Bombay Presidency, Bengal and the Punjab. During this period missionaries ascribed utility to the corpus of western scholarship as an ally against Indian religions.

In India, religion seems to permeate everything. Even political structures and economic arrangements are religiously linked or motivated. When we attempt to evolve a program of Religious Education in India, we should be sensitive to all these issues. Our theory of Religious Education should be theologically sound and pedagogically viable and at the same time it should emerge out of our faith response to the reality of plurality and diversity. After all, Christian Education is a mode of faith-articulation. In this sense it is faith-formation.