William Wilson Hunter Quotes
No young man ... passes through our schools without learning to disbelieve the faith of his forefathers. The luxuriant religions of Asia shrivel into dry sticks when brought into contact with the icy realities of Western science.
He had studied the British Colonial Education System in England. At the same time, there were complaints by Christians in England and America that education at colleges and universities produced skepticism and disbelief of traditional religion. The Jews of the Middle East complained before the birth of Christ that Jewish men who attended the Greek Gymnasiums lost their faith in Judaism. There has always been a conflict between secular education and religion in this respect.
William Wilson Hunter, 1840-1900, English Home Under Secretary for India, President, Education Committee of the British Colonial Government of India, Indian Musalmans, 1871
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The problem was that the British had adopted an Indian Civil Service system and instituted an educational system to train Indians. The Hindus attended the schools and did very well on the examinations. The Muslims, however, resisted the secular education, and most of their young men could not pass the examinations. See {616924} & {616925}.
The Western style of education was extremely effective for the Hindus, but was much less successful for the Muslims. The result was that over time, the Hundus achieved success in the professions, civil service, arts and sciences while the Muslims did not, thus changing the then existing parity of the two groups. For more on the difficulty that the Muslims had with British public education, see {616919} & {616925}.
Sir William Wilson Hunter KCSI CIE was a Scottish historian, statistician, a compiler and a member of the Indian Civil Service.
