& for that reason only,there were ~80,000 Gurukuls alone in Bengal before British came in.
The ration was, one school/ 400 population. (The standard was way higher than that of current times & certainly way better than the British).
Source: Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant
The ration was, one school/ 400 population. (The standard was way higher than that of current times & certainly way better than the British).
Source: Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant
He also mentions that percentage of literacy was higher in the Ashoka's period (almost two centuries later than what @JoeAgneya has quoted).
He explains, "Children went to the village school from September to February, entering at the age of five & leaving at the age of eight.
He explains, "Children went to the village school from September to February, entering at the age of five & leaving at the age of eight.
Instruction was chiefly of a religious character, no matter what the subject; rote memorizing was the usual method, and the Vedas were the inevitable text."
Will Durant further writes, "(...) character was rated above intellect, and discipline was the essence of schooling. We do not hear of flogging, or of other severe measures; but we find that stress was laid above all upon the formation of wholesome and proper habits of life.
At the age of eight the pupil passed to the more formal care of a Guru, or personal teacher and guide, with whom the student was to live, preferably till he was twenty.
Services, sometimes menial, were required of him, and he was pledged to continence, modesty, cleanliness, and a meatless diet. Instruction was now given him in the "Five Sbastras" or sciences: grammar, arts and crafts, medicine, logic, and philosophy.
Finally he was sent out into the world with the wise admonition that education came only one-fourth from the teacher, one-fourth from private study, one-fourth from one's fel- lows, and one-fourth from life.
From his Guru the student might pass, about the age of sixteen, to one of the great universities that were the glory of ancient and medieval India: Benares, Taxila, Vidarbha, Ajanta, Ujjain, or Nalanda."
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