The De-Subalternization of the Knowledge of Education? Lecturing Pedagogic Knowledge in Colonial India

• This article examines the import of Western pedagogic knowledge, knowledge about the theory and principles of education and teaching, in India from its very first formulations in Bengal in the 1840s until its inclusion at the University of Madras in 1882. The article follows the early trajectory of British pedagogical knowledge in the colonial setting, its associated knowledge practices related to its institutionalization in teachers’ education institutions and the main contents related to it. The research is based on a wide range of documents about colonial educational policy, particularly related to lectures in education and teaching, and a sample of early manuals of education and teaching. This article shows that, although not fully accepted as a relevant form of knowledge in Britain at the time, colonial educators introduced pedagogic knowledge as a manner of transforming inherited educational practices in India. In this process, colonial officials, missionaries, and up-per-caste native authors authored manuals and embodied this kind of knowledge, in what can be interpreted as a de-subalternization of the knowledge of education in the colonial setting.

This article deals with the beginning of the import of a kind of knowledge of education claimed by colonial officials as purportedly new to the country: pedagogic knowledge. The knowledge of teaching and learning conveyed by this term has its own conflicted history in England, as Brian Simon famously suggested. Simon showed that elite public schools and elementary schools, although eminently different, coincided for different reasons in their common aim of promoting attitudes and character formation rather than intellectual development. On this basis, pedagogy, the "science of teaching", did not reach a legitimate and prestigious position within the field of education in England. 3 Yet exactly this kind of knowledge seems to have informed British officials' perceptions about the superiority of Western forms of educational knowledge.
What was the early trajectory of this knowledge in the Indian colonial setting? Did it retain the inferior status that pedagogic knowledge had in the British metropolis? Which knowledge practices contributed to its early institutionalization? What content was associated with it? In the following, I will focus on the first decades of the spread and institutionalization of the "art of teaching", then the main term for pedagogic knowledge, from the middle of the nineteenth century to around 1882, when the first institutionalization of the degree of a licentiate of teaching at the University of Madras 4 signalled the acceptance of pedagogic knowledge even in the highest echelons of the educational hierarchy. Although huge regional variations existed in the development of education in India, I will not focus on any one region or presidency of the colony in particular, since the problem of pedagogic knowledge and its institutionalization was posed as a general, and not a localized one. Certainly, the different educational situations in each province of the colony are also worthy of specific studies. However, the localization strategy followed in this article is institutional rather than regional or political-administrative: I will focus on a type of institution emerging all over India in the middle of the nineteenth century: teacher training institutions. For this purpose, I will use published materials and archival documents dealing with the establishment and reform of teacher education in the country. These materials include almost complete series of the official reports on education from all provinces and specific documents from the archives dealing with the establishment of institutions for the training of teachers. In addition, in order to reconstruct the content of pedagogic knowledge, I will include a set of manuals of education and teaching used in these institutions in their first decades.
I will delve into the subject first by looking into the conceptual and historiographical problem of pedagogy and pedagogic knowledge within the broader issue of colonial knowledge transfer. Secondly, I will sketch the introduction of the knowledge of teaching and learning that was labelled the "art of teaching" in the educational scene in Bengal in the late 1830s. I will then hint at the main forms of institutionalization of this type of knowledge in the newly established institutions of teacher education and analyse the main site of articulation of the explicit form of pedagogic knowledge: lecturing on teaching and education and its main textbooks. In sum, I will show that although the subaltern status of pedagogic knowledge in the metropolis, meaning here its inferior rank in the field of elaborated knowledge, 5 still influenced its introduction and acceptance in British India, the colonial situation reframed it and, to some degree, de-subalternized it.

'Pedagogic' knowledge and the history of colonial knowledge
In this article, 'pedagogic knowledge' may be understood as an explicitly formulated knowledge about the theory and principles of education and, in particular, teaching. Pedagogic knowledge is fundamentally about methods of teaching, but also includes organizational and contextual aspects of the educational work in a rather reflexive way. 6 It is an explicit form of knowledge in contrast to other formulations characterizing educational knowledge as embodied, tacit, or implicit. This definition also departs from other formulations in which pedagogy stood for larger and more comprehensive educational outlooks, many of them referring to the German term Pädagogik that, since the late eighteenth century, has depicted a whole system of education, teaching, and learning, including its philosophical foundations. 7 Finally, the meaning of pedagogy behind 'pedagogic knowledge' is different from newer meanings such as the "process through which knowledge is produced", including "the transformation of consciousness", a definition assumed in Sumathi Ramaswany's impressive work on the globe as an epistemic device in colonial India. 8 Rather than a "process", a type of explicit knowledge as opposed to implied knowledge of education, teaching, and instruction, found for instance in textbooks, 9 sums up the main perspective of the article.
Pedagogic knowledge of Western provenience represented only one breed of the knowledge innovations that colonialism, for better or worse, brought to the country. One salient global development in the last three centuries has been the ascendance of forms and variations of knowledge that have come to be termed as 'Western' , or 'European' . 10 It was not only in India that this knowledge transfer posed enormous problems in relation to established native epistemic authority and world views. 11 Beyond narratives of the simple imposition of these forms of knowledge upon defenceless cultures, recent scholarship has delved into more transactional, albeit still unequal models of dealing with knowledge transfer and knowledge imposition. 12 This scholarship has argued that transfer and imposition never resulted in a mere copy or a simple transposition without unintended consequences and conflicting outcomes; and it has also called attention to the limited, but existing agency of local actors and groups when dealing with the challenges of these new types of knowledge.
Imported pedagogic knowledge in India has repeatedly been the object of historical scrutiny. 13 In particular, post-and decolonial approaches have showed some of its effects within the context of colonial workings. For instance, Sanjay Seth convincingly argued that pedagogical criticism -for instance "the anxiety of cram" 14 -advanced new forms of subjectivity in the colonial situation. Similarly, but in another vein, Parna Sengupta maintained that Evangelical pedagogy in colonial Bengal, appropriated and transformed by native authors, contributed to the fashioning of collective reformed communal identities for Hindus and Muslims coping with modern coloniality. 15 One specific aspect of pedagogic knowledge, the Pestalozzian object lessons, has attracted considerable attention. 16 Further scholarship has addressed the question of pedagogic knowledge in a rather indirect way, for instance, when looking into the emergence of the literary canon, 17 or into the "pedagogic limits" of colonial educational policies confronted with the financial and cultural fundamentals of Indian society. 18 It is against this background that this article looks into the making of pedagogic knowledge itself. The article does not predominantly focus on its effects. Instead, it looks to its programmatic emergence and its first forms of institutionalization and negotiation.
Contrary to the judgements of British actors, pedagogic knowledge as such was anything but new in India. Ancient sources already displayed statements related to patterns of teaching and interaction. 19 Moreover, in the time of the Upanishads (700-200 BC), the teacher actually became "an object of discourse". 20 The Upanishads disapproved of self-study and argued that only when knowledge transmission involved another person could knowledge really be achieved. 21 Accordingly, texts advanced norms for transmitting knowledge, including some for those who would become teachers themselves. 22 Later, still in the Hindu tradition, traces of pedagogic knowledge are evident, as in the case of the famous teacher Adi Shankara (ca. 700 CE), who advocated questions, reasoning, and the use of exegetical strategies when teaching philosophy. 23 These discernible forms of knowledge were also present after Muslim polities dominated most of the subcontinent after 1200 CE. One extremely rare document from the sixteenth century, recorded by the court historiographer Abul Fazl, showed that the powerful Mogul state issued recommendations for teaching in schools to combat the perceived waste of time in many of them. These recommendations included how to write different forms of letters and how to join them. This document displays a clear interest in children gaining understanding and not only learning by memorization. 24 The coming of what was termed as navavidya -new knowledge, meaning Western, mostly scientific knowledge -may have challenged the position of these traditions of pedagogic knowledge from the late eighteenth century onwards. It seems, nonetheless, that the arrival of the new knowledge did not immediately impact forms of transmission and the knowledge of teaching and learning associated with them. For instance, in the novel type of schools dedicated to navavidya established by Serfoji II of Tanjore, native versions of pedagogic knowledge still dominated. 25 Recent scholarship is highly divided on the question of local pedagogic knowledge traditions at the eve of colonialism. For Dharampal, a nationalist historian in the Gandhian tradition, "the method of school teaching was superior" to the innovations introduced in the nineteenth century. 26 Tim Allender, who has dealt with colonial policies in depth, portrayed Indian teachers at this time as lacking "a pedagogical language to critique their practice". 27 Allender points to the dramatic situation for Indian teachers since it was not only new knowledge that had to be conveyed in schools. The ascendancy of English and the devaluation of inherited forms of knowledge -systems of arithmetic, measurement, laws, and, not least, the somewhat dramatized "sudden death of Sanskrit knowledge" 28 -posed an altogether new situation, in which, increasingly, older forms of knowledge were no longer the first choice for either the colonizers or the colonized. Interested parties such as liberal colonial officials saw in the crisis of inherited pedagogical knowledge an opening for their endeavours. Charles E. Trevelyan, writing in the late 1830s, maintained that these forms of knowledge were disposable: "The Brahminical and Moslem systems belong to bygone days; a large portion of them has become obsolete (…) The associations connected with the new learning, on the other hand, are gaining ground every day (…)". 29 This was not about simple imposition of metropolitan models. Trevelyan and others saw vernacular languages as not being completely appropriated for conveying new knowledge. In his view, the colonial situation and the navavidya required new forms of pedagogical knowledge.

The ' Art of Teaching' arrives in the colony
Early administrators of the East India Company supported the establishment of Madrassas and higher Hindu learning institutions, following older traditions of patronage of educated elites by the rulers. The support of these institutions attracted most of the funding. 30 Overall, these first moves in the history of colonial educational policy implied continuity, and not rupture in the culture of teaching and learning. A specific new pedagogic knowledge seemed not to be needed for these prestigious elite institutions. Only the coming of monitorial elementary schools in the first decades of the nineteenth century represented a first rupture in the shaping of teaching and learning. The intended mass-scale of monitorial schools, the highly rationalized and ordered routines, as well as the previously unheard-of devices for the functioning of the monitorial classrooms evidenced the beginning of a new time in the development of educational institutions. Heavily supported by missionary groups, 31 the coming of monitorial teaching, dependent on the agency of advanced pupils rather than on the work of an adult teacher, seemed not to need a reasoned knowledge of teaching 26  and learning. Monitorial schools were designed to function by following detailed manuals, published from 1816 onwards, for the arrangement and management of schools and they did not treat problems of teaching and learning as questions to be generally discussed or reasoned with. Of course, innovations occurred, such as dictation to a big group "of 50 or 100", 32 but monitorial teachers simply enacted these techniques and were not particularly concerned with justifications. As the Bombay Native School Book and School Society put it in relation to their trained Maratha teachers, it was sufficient to be instructed in the basic branches of knowledge, including arithmetic "on the European system", and having "a competent knowledge of the improved system of managing schools". 33 The agents of this school society did not consider that the native teachers needed a more reflexive knowledge of teaching and learning. This radically changed in the 1830s. The famous controversy over English or vernacular education, epitomized in Macaulay's Anglicist minute from 1835, set the stage for an additional problem. 34 If Macaulay and Lord Bentick, the Governor General, endorsed education in English as being the sole branch of instruction worthy of government support, this implied that the education of a larger number of teachers -European and native -with a strong command of English could not be deferred any longer: "At present we are forced to put up with the leavings of every other trade and profession. A missionary who becomes tired of converting, a newspaper writer who has quarrelled with the editor, a shopkeeper who has failed, a clerk in a public office who has lost his place, are the sort of people whom we are forced to look to (…) Teaching is an art to be learned by practice. I have known people of the greatest genius and learning who could teach nothing; and we have scarcely appointed a single person of whom we knew that he was experienced in the art of teaching. " 35 Similarly, missionaries promoted their own plans for the preparation of schoolteachers. When the Reverend William Adam travelled throughout Bengal in the 1830s and wrote a highly celebratory account of the state of native education in the region, he inaugurated a discourse about the need for training in the 'art of teaching' . Adam proposed to communicate "to the body of teachers a superior degree and kind of instruction" and, by this, he meant that "the capacity to acquire and the capacity to communicate knowledge do not necessarily co-exist in the same person (…)". 36 For this purpose, "written directions verbally explained" and "practical example" may be useful; 37 but a third mode combining "precept and example" in specialized institutions -the normal schools -was also needed. In normal schools, students should receive "instruction and example (…) in the art of teaching". 38 The knowledge of "the theory and practice of the art of teaching" 39 entered the educational scene of India. The Calcutta Christian Observer, founded by one of the most energic evangelicals, Alexander Duff, introduced the question of the need for this type of knowledge with explicit regulatory and controlling purposes. In an article announcing the formation of a Christian School Book Society, the anonymous author warned that caring about the quality of education was as important as advocating its extension. Otherwise, "a swarm of half informed young men" 40 would emerge, whose intonation in reciting literature showed that they neither felt, nor understood "the forces of the passages". This was an "imagined elevation" of the intellect devoid of "morals and religion". 41 The author went on to say that "This evil can only be corrected by paying particular attention to the kind of education imparted, by selecting teachers who are well acquainted with the art as well as the science of education (…)" 42 Practical men, not scholars, had come to help. Equipped with "the art of teaching" and following "the gradual development of the intellectual faculty", these men could provide for a right understanding of works and content. 43 Here, the art of teaching should provide for a correct handling of content transmission, disciplining meanings and promoting the "right understanding". 44 The headmaster of the Benares English College also considered "that greater attention should be paid to the manners and behaviour of our pupils, that the school-rooms should be matted, and made fit to respectable pupils, that the art of teaching does not come by intuition, but that teachers must be regularly trained to the efficient discharge of their duties". 45 In sum, for these actors, pedagogic knowledge consistently represented a reformist and regulatory type of knowledge. Formulating, theorising, reflecting on the process of knowledge transmission required a type of knowledge enabling an observation of actual practices that, eventually, could correct, or better them. In this sense, the very formulation of an 'art of teaching' was conducive to reflective and reformist intentions opposed to routine and simple custom. This vindication of pedagogic knowledge thrived particularly in missionary circles, whereas official educational policy did not show a particular interest in pedagogic knowledge as an object of educational policy.
Nonetheless, pedagogic knowledge conveyed a tension that would remain critical for its limited institutionalization both in the metropolis and the colony. "The science and art of teaching", 46 knowledge focused on methodical knowledge transmission in collective instructional spaces, actually conveyed two conflicting meanings about its nature and status: art and science. This dichotomy in the characterization may have included a linking "and"; but, for institutional purposes, the dichotomy remained problematic because each of these two characterizations could lead to a different type of institutionalization: apprenticeship or higher education. This evoked the perennial problem of the relationship between teachers' training and universities, a contentious issue, even in the Metropolis. 47 Some advocates of a more consistent approach to the art of teaching as a science, like the Scottish physician, polymath and former Secretary to the Council of Education in Bengal, Thomas Alexander Wise in his statement before the Lords Chamber, associated the training in this art with other forms of professional training such as "attending the Courts, or the medical or Engineering College". 48 However, when all the Indian presidencies established normal schools following the Wood's Despatch from 1854, an approach close to a form of apprenticeship was settled upon as the dominant variety. Pedagogic knowledge experienced a first form of institutionalization as an 'art' that would police teachers' mores and, simultaneously, students' learning. In this sense, as an 'art' , British discourse on pedagogic knowledge in the colony reproduced notions of a subaltern status of this type of knowledge, as being practical and not scholarly.

Lectures on teaching: a new practice of institutionalized pedagogic knowledge
When normal schools began to be established in India after 1854, the context of their emergence was a radically new one. After the long tenure of the East India Company, the British integrated the Indian territories into their empire as a reaction to the uprisings against British presence in Northern India in 1857. The new direct rule by the Crown meant a more assertive educational policy. British agents had always had to negotiate their forms of ruling and regulating with local actors and mostly avoided altering local customs. The context of the institutionalization of pedagogic knowledge in normal schools after 1858 was different. British attitudes towards local forms of knowledge and local institutions shifted to become quite negative; British racism intensified. 49 The old policy line of respecting existing institutions yielded to a more conscious policy of changing the existing institutions and establishing new ones. All provinces organized different forms of teacher's training in newly established normal schools. These schools were expected to train teachers for elementary and middle schools. Since the knowledge of the numerous vernacular languages was a crucial aspect in training native teachers, British educators still had to cooperate with native agents and pandits (Sanskrit scholars). As the British increasingly bought into the idea that a more reflexive understanding of teaching and learning, through pedagogic knowledge, should open a new era of education, they also brought with them meanings that were not only positively associated with this endeavour. The English semantics of the 'pedagogue' and 'pedagogy' bore pejorative meanings. A preliminary analysis of the use of these words showed that they conveyed meanings of the pedantic and of artificial selfimportance. 50 Even a verb, "to pedagogue", existed, meaning "to teach with the airs of a pedant". 51 Traces of these meanings survived well into the nineteenth century and may have contributed to the fragile status of pedagogic knowledge in the British Empire. In the 1860s, when an English school inspector wanted to speak to the Vice-President of the Education Department, Robert Lowe, about a "professional" question, he promptly replied: "I know what you've come about, the science of education. There is none. Good morning". 52 This was for a long time the prevailing attitude of the elite towards pedagogical knowledge. Accordingly, many British authors admitted pedagogic knowledge only as a kind of knowledge suited for the arts, without a theoretical and reflexive status befitting a science.
When normal schools became the privileged sites for cultivating and propagating pedagogic knowledge, the options discussed in the metropolis -pedagogy and the art of teaching as 'art' or 'science' -were reconsidered in the context of the colonial situation. 'The art of teaching' in the curriculum of normal schools looked to integrate both more reflexive, intellectual as well as more practical and embodied forms of knowledge. John Murdoch, the Dean of missionary education in South India, proposed different activities in his manual for teachers Hints on Education in India. First, lectures on teaching, "or examination on a text-book on the subject"; 53 second, the "inspection of the Model School", where regular teachers had to observe routines; third, "teaching in the Model School" under supervision; and lastly, "criticism Lessons", where teachers prepared and conducted a lesson and, after dismissing the children, a critique of the lesson by the head teacher should take place. 54 Here, I will focus on the new practice of lecturing on education, teaching and school management as a novel site of knowledge formulation and spread where pedagogic knowledge was neither implied, nor embodied, but appeared in an explicit, reasoned and systematic shape. Even native observers considered these lectures to be the crucial difference to older forms of teachers' apprenticeship. 55  lectures, the general and ambivalent expression 'art of teaching' was being translated into discernible "knowledge practices". 56 Lecturing on education was by no means an easy sell since many officials and experts sided with those who saw pedagogic knowledge as inherent to an art rather than being primarily an intellectual product. For instance, Mr. Woodrow, inspector of schools in East Bengal, described this instruction as "practical" and observed: "in this way the Pundit will be drilled in the art of teaching (…)". 57 As the Normal Department of Poona College noted, pedagogic knowledge conceived as a part of drilling was a widespread view of officials wishing to emphasize "training" and not studying. 58 In sum, the usual opinion among officials was probably reflected by the sceptical question posed in the Bombay Quarterly Review: "Is there one who has made the science of teaching a study, or indeed is, at present, capable of studying it as a science?" 59 Still, other actors opened perspectives complementary to the need of simply training in the 'art' . Some missionaries differentiated between "instruction in the science of teaching" [my emphasis, MC] and the supervision of the "practice of the art of teaching". 60 Similarly, the Calcutta Review, close to missionary endeavors, argued that if education "is a science as well as an art", then both "study and practice" were necessary. 61 Regardless of these diverging views on the subject, lectures and courses on education began to enter the curriculum of the teacher training institutions in the metropolis and the colonies as well. 62 Lectures on education, teaching, and school management constituted the knowledge practice that had the strongest connection with the idea of the knowledge of education as being a "theory" or a "science". Knowledge of different sorts -philosophical, psychological, organizational, didactical -found a place of systematization and communication in these lectures. Whereas official documents often assumed that all teacher education institutions held some lectures for their students, reality often proved the contrary. T. C. Hope, education inspector in the Bombay Presidency, reported that the new director of the Ahmedabad normal school found in 1858 that students did not know "much of the principles or art of teaching" and ordered the introduction of lectures in the re-arranged timetable. 63 Once organized, lectures had to give precedence to other duties of these schools, so that the teacher training school in Burdwan admitted that only "some" lectures had taken place so far. 64 Even in the 1870s there were not lectures on education, teaching or school management in the female normal schools in the North-Western Provinces. 65 In cases in which only one head teacher governed the normal school, it was almost impossible to lecture on the "art of teaching". Accordingly, a second teacher was often needed, as in the normal school in Gowhatty (Asam), so that the head teacher could "give his undivided attention" to instructing the students in the new subject. 66 Overall, the status of lectures conveying systematic pedagogic knowledge was, at best, fragile. The conclusions of a commission set up by the government in Calcutta for the reform of education in 1856, show this very clearly. To be sure, the lower class of normal schools "should enter upon the Science of Education", but "we would advise their being instructed in this, somewhat after the tutorial plan, rather than by lectures. They should read approved works on the subject, to be selected by the Normal Superintendent. These should daily be read with him in class, so as to give the pupils the benefit of his explanation and remarks. Once a week, each Normal Scholar should write, if possible from memory, an abstract of the week's reading; and give his views thereon in approval or otherwise. " 67 The quoted report hints at another consequence of organizing pedagogic knowledge as 'lectures' . The specific setting of a 'lecture' , usually associated with higher education, placed them ideally as a prerogative of the (mostly European) director of the normal school. 68 For instance, in the normal school in Patna the European superintendent was in charge of lectures in education and teaching for all three courses and for both departments, the Persian-Urdu and the Sanskrit-Hindi. 69 Similarly, Mr Dick, inspector in Rawalpindi (Punjab), suspected that the superintendence of the local normal schools was not in the right hands: "In my opinion the normal school should occupy an intermediate position, both in dignity and emolument between the upper school and the college, and ought to have a European superintendent who is himself conversant with all the approved methods of western teaching. " 70 Sound pedagogic knowledge was associated with a knowledge almost exclusively commanded by Europeans. Examples of this abound. The Government of the Bombay Presidency was "aware of the urgent need for European teachers of 'method, ' or the art of teaching, in this Presidency". 71 When authorities looked for a new director for the Normal School in Jubbulpore (Central Provinces) the preference clearly was to have "a competent European teacher of the art of teaching". 72 British officials in Bombay suspected that the lectures in the normal schools were of poor quality and recommended that high school teachers, who could speak English, should spend some time "under an English teacher of method in Bombay". 73 The main problem with this view was the question of language. Very few of the school directors really spoke native languages, so that only persons with a command of the native languages could deliver the lectures.
Self-complacent British opinion deemed native teachers as potentially good for imparting school knowledge, "but let any one who has had opportunities, as we have had, of becoming well acquainted with the best of the educated natives, candidly ask himself whether he has met one who can be deemed to possess those qualities which are absolutely essential for him before he can be fitted to put youths through a course of intellectual training. Is there one who has made the science of teaching a study, or indeed is, at present, capable of studying it as a science? As we have before said, we give these young men the credit of being able to impart a certain amount of knowledge, but surely this is a very small part of a system of education. " 74 Pedagogic knowledge, particularly when conceived of as a "science", could seemingly have functioned as a gate keeper for aspirational natives. Tellingly, when native teachers lectured on education, as in the case of Mr. Myputram in the normal school in Ahmedabad at the end of the 1850s, these lectures were described as treating only "school management", one of the most practical and normative parts of the lectures. 75 But native actors also increasingly reclaimed their own expertise on the knowledge conveyed by the lectures. One of them, Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, a noted educator, government official and book author, characterized as a transformative conservative, 76 asserted his own authority as a representant of new pedagogic knowledge in his inspection tours throughout Bengal. In his instructions to the headmasters of the training schools regarding the teaching in traditional Bengali schools called patshalas, he stressed: "I have required the Head Masters of the Training schools to give lectures to their pupils on the comparative merits of what might be called the school and the patshala methods of instruction. It has been thus made necessary for the masters of the Training schools to think well on the effects of any changes which they might be disposed at any time to introduce. These lectures on method are in every instance revised by me ere they are discussed before the pupils. " 77 The introduction of Western-coded pedagogic knowledge and a new knowledge practice of lecturing by British and native teachers in the subject was therefore consolidated.

Not only colonial voices: The content of lectures through their textbooks
The considerable language barriers impeded the British from monopolizing pedagogic knowledge, particularly when addressed to prospective vernacular teachers, who did not speak English. Moreover, reform-oriented natives problematized the inherited pedagogic culture in schools and came to be intrigued with the new versions of pedagogic knowledge brought by the British. The famous intellectual Raja Rammohun Roy had already complained not only that "real knowledge", meaning scientific knowledge, had to be propagated, but the "Sanskrit system of education" including its pedagogical preferences had to be changed. 78 Native voices in Bengal came to criticize the inherited forms of schooling by the middle of the century, for instance, when the bhadralok, literary elites, complained of the bookish (punthigata) nature of the new liberal education, or when they criticized the emphasis of the old gurukuls ('Guru' schools) on character and not intellectual education. 79 When focusing on natives as actors conveying pedagogic knowledge, one central point has to be emphasized: almost all these authors, some of them prestigious pandits serving the colonial administration, 80 the native teachers in normal schools, and even the large majority of the students were from higher-caste backgrounds. Although detailed studies are still lacking, sources show that the institutional context of normal schools was strongly Brahminical, although it also included members of writing castes. 81 In a society heavily structured through these lineages, this fact is of great significance when estimating the status of the knowledge these natives conveyed.
Evidence about the content of the lectures is scarce, but occasionally available. When asked to generally describe the plan for normal schools in Bengal, one educational inspector summed up as follows: for the third years' class, "lectures and practice in the School"; in the second years' class, "Bhodeb Siksha Dihayaka and lectures and practice in the school"; lastly, for the first years' class "Lectures on the Pestalozzian system and practice in the school". 82 A year later, "Bhudeb's art of teaching. Practice in the Model School. Practice in judging of weights, measures, and distance" was added to the first years' class; and "Bhudeb's Shikhya Bedhayak, and lectures of the Art of Teaching. Practice in the Model School" 83 was added to the second years' class. Finally, another year later, the plan discarded the lectures on the Pestalozzian system. 84 This description already shows that the mention of a particular book usually replaced a detailed list of contents. For this reason, one major possibility for reconstructing institutionalized pedagogic knowledge included in the lectures entails an analysis of the main content of these books. 85 In general, the problem of how to convey pedagogic knowledge to 'native teachers' and 'native students' was closely related to the availability of these suitable books. Reginald Thornton, a British official reporting from Agra in the 1840s, saw serious difficulties in instructing in the art of teaching: "I therefore propose that a short treatise explanatory of the principles of teaching, such as the classification of scholars, questioning and cross-questioning them on their lessons, spelling, writing from dictation, keeping registers of admission and dismissal, and of the daily attendance and position of every boy in his class, be prepared and put into the hands of the teachers (…). " 86 When normal schools were established, the Director of Public Instruction in Madras complained that, "a manual on the art of teaching" was needed, "but at present nothing sufficiently simple is available". 87 This lack of suitable books was also felt in Bengal, but with a further condition, "such a manual ought not to be a translation, but should to a great degree partake of the character of an original composition, and comprise all that is wanted to convey instruction in the art of Teaching, the proper arrangement of classes, the discipline to be maintained and in short all the branches of a Teacher's duty. " 88 Nonetheless, manuals on education and teaching were used across the subcontinent in the lectures of the normal schools. 89 Examiners and inspectors often brought the manuals into focus when they examined the normal school students. In Dhaka, in 1857, examination questions included "What books have you read on the art of teaching? Give an epitome of some one of these books". 90 Inspectors posed similar questions in Patna in the same year -"Have you read any books on Teaching? If so, enumerate any 83 Report Bengal 1860-61, App. A, 24-25. 84 General report on public instruction in the Lower Provinces of the methods recommended therein for teaching any particular branches to learners" 91 -or in Chittagong: "What books have you read, and what instruction have you received on the art of teaching" 92 Years later, in Jubbulpore (Central Provinces), the inspector referred to the examination in the art of teaching as the examination in the "school manual". 93 In sum, there is no doubt that a closer look at these books offers an acceptable proxy for the content of the lectures on education and teaching in normal schools.
A provisional survey of manuals covering education, teaching and school management published in India from the establishment of the first normal schools in the 1840s until 1882 resulted in a group of 21 texts with a total of 35 editions. These editions include for instance one text that was translated into three different languages. Out of this group of 35 editions, one third was in Bengali (12), followed by Urdu (5), Tamil (5), English (4), Oriya (3), Gujarati (2), Hindi (2), and Marathi (2). All the texts mentioned in the sources as being used in the lectures in normal schools are identifiable in the survey. Not least because of the challenging variety of languages, I will focus on five of these texts when looking at the contents of the lectures. Whereas two of these texts were originally written in Bengali -Bhudev Mukhopadhyay's An Introduction to the Art of Teaching (Sikshavidhyaka prastava, 1856(Sikshavidhyaka prastava, , 1860(Sikshavidhyaka prastava, , 1881 and Gopal Chunder Badyopadhyay's An Elementary Treatise on Education (Shikshapranali, 1864(Shikshapranali, , 1868(Shikshapranali, , 1872 94 -English educators authored the other three texts, although all these manuals were translated into vernacular languages of the country: John Murdoch's Hints on Education in India was published in English (1860) (1872), before the author edited it himself in English (1881). His manual was the only one explicitly reflecting lectures originally delivered to "Normal Students" in India. 95 These five manuals totalled 15 of the identified editions and cover some of the most important Indian languages. The analysis focuses on the main themes addressed in the books and not on questions related to, for instance, conceptual changes through translation or further elaborations of the native translators or authors.
Regarding the contents, all the treatises went well beyond plain and simple instructions and definitions. To different degrees, all the manuals included three different types of pedagogic knowledge. First, general principles and comments abounded. These included different headings, such as the need of education of the people in general and the necessary training and education of teachers in particular together with "the principles upon which pupils should be training in schools" (Mukhopadhyay), 96 "general principles of education" (Bandyopadhyay), 97 "the pleasantness of teaching" (Dunn), 98 or "ability to govern" (Fowler). 99 Second, manuals regularly included a separate chapter on school management. Under this general term, they discussed the general arrangement of schools, school apparatus, classification of pupils, registers, timetables, and all things related to the general order of the classrooms. Third, many chapters referred to the teaching of individual subjects, including quite new forms of school knowledge for India such as geography, history, drawing, or even physical education. Sometimes integrated into the general principles, sometimes into the question of school management, considerations about discipline, punishment and rewards were ubiquitous.
Although these three major themes were present in all manuals suggesting the emergence of a shared knowledge canon, the concrete organization of pedagogic knowledge varied greatly across the manuals. Murdoch's manual is a good example of a deductive form of organization of pedagogic knowledge. He began with his "general principles", covering the "nature of education", "teacher's qualifications", "discipline", "method" and "questioning" and then descending into the "special subjects of instruction" and finally to "school management". 100 Yet in Bandyopadhyay's book, general but not abstract considerations about "the duty of parents to give proper education to their children", or "the necessity of learning first the mother language" preceded questions related to school management and discipline and only in the fourteenth chapter (!) did he discuss "general principles of education. " 101 Whereas Murdoch intended a kind of knowledge that advanced in a rather deductive way, derived from first principles and classifications and maintaining a precedence of systematic considerations over practical questions, Bandyopadhyay preferred a series of situated considerations followed by practical questions and ending with general orientations. Fowler's text was, in this respect, probably the most diverse in the structuring of chapters and headings. It proceeded from general considerations to "punishment", "rewards", "discipline, "instruction", and "regularity and punctuality", somewhat going from the general to the specific. The list of contents of his manual comprised fully six pages in a book with less than 90 pages. The list of "contents" resembles a list of sentences, quoted from the lectures, that could be memorized. These sentences constituting the titles in the list of contents were highlighted in bold type in the middle of the running text. This shape of the text was not only practical; it also implies an assumption of the author about the limited ability of the teachers who might use this manual. Eventually, the context for the origin of this textbook, actual lectures on education and instruction at the normal school in Madras, may have convinced him to disaggregate more complex arguments into step-by-step considerations.
The elements and organization of pedagogic knowledge displayed in these manuals shared some common features, but also showed plenty of room for variation. In this first exploratory analysis, commonalities stood in focus, largely leaving questions such as reinterpretation through translation, semantic local innovations, or the referencing of traditional categories while introducing the new type of knowledge 102 for further analysis. This first approach to institutionalized pedagogic knowledge, as presented in the lectures conducted in normal schools, revealed that actors had to grapple with a new kind of knowledge whose classification and mastery was everything but simple. Pedagogic knowledge did not guarantee good teaching, but actors deemed it necessary at least for avoiding errors and for preparing the more practical parts of pedagogic training. Pedagogic knowledge certainly included a series of instructions to be followed. Yet, in general, even in school management and in the teaching of specific subjects, largely operational and normative forms of knowledge, all texts presented a type of knowledge that frequently was reasoned and commented on rather than only given, or simply stated.

Discussion: The knowledge of education, colonialism, and native hierarchies
The long-term impact of lecturing on education and teaching is anything but simple to assess. In the short-term, backlashes were common. Although lectures were supposed to make the reasonings behind organizational and didactical decisions understandable, the 'bookish' nature of pedagogic knowledge displayed in the lectures led many students to simple rote learning, contradicting the very purposes of stressing the importance of the 'art of teaching' . The inspector Mr. Constable in the North-Western Provinces observed that "the art of teaching" was "a subject somewhat distasteful to the Natives"; 103 this may have been a factor in why inspectors often complained that "the answers to the written questions on the Art of Teaching were miserably bad". 104 Certainly, the notions associated with pedagogic knowledge, particularly with its institutionalization in normal schools, had to be introduced to the general public, as Máhádeo Govind Shástri, school inspector of the first division in the Bombay Province, did in the locality of Sattara in 1853: "In my conversations with the people I was very sorry to find that a majority of them entertained very wrong notions regarding the important subject of education (…) The prevailing notion is that 'anybody can be a schoolmaster. ' As this notion is highly prejudicial to the self-supporting system, I took great pains to correct it, and to convince the people that the art of teaching is the most important and most difficult of all arts. When I directed their attention to the various capacities, tastes, and tempers of their children collected in a school, and made them feel that the object of the school is not only to instruct the children in various branches of knowledge, but to repress bad passions, and at the same time to develop the better feelings of the heart, they themselves acknowledged that to effect all this great skill is required, and that an inexperienced man, who has not learnt the art of teaching, will never be able to manage a school properly. " 105 From a historiographical point of view, a sceptical view of this toooptimistic account is highly advisable. Nonetheless, pedagogic knowledge may have made its way into local actor groups. In Jubbulpore (Central Provinces), local schoolteachers formed a society for the diffusion of "useful knowledge" under the direction of Mulvi Sufdur, the district inspector of schools. Not only schoolmasters, but also "a good sprinkling of townspeople with a few European gentlemen" attended some lessons, among them one about the "art of teaching" by Baboo K. C. Bose, another "lecture on school management" by Sufdur Ali himself, and a "conversation on female education". 106 Explicit pedagogic knowledge was certainly a side aspect of the broader epistemic changes related to the colonial condition. Yet simple binary assumptions about the colonizer/the colonized seem not to apply to the situation as described in this article. This was the case because some of the colonizers, against the mainstream opinion in the metropolis, stressed the importance of pedagogic knowledge in the education of the new type of teachers; simultaneously, some native groups embraced the new possibilities opened up by the pedagogic knowledge imported by the British. These two disparate groups facilitated what I would call a partial de-subalternization of this type of knowledge. This shift does not mean that pedagogic knowledge per se became a prestigious form of scholarship. Yet, in the colonial situation, the status of this type of knowledge changed for at least two reasons. First, the association between pedagogic knowledge and the colonizers alone conferred the former a more complex epistemic status. Second, the rather higher-caste status of the large majority of the native actors involved in its formulation and spread complemented the repositioning of this knowledge in the status rankings. Although many of these Brahmin natives and members of writing castes may have been themselves of humble social origin, the structuring of South Asian societies along caste lines superposed the simple lines of hierarchy following different degrees of wealth. Those asserting their proficiency in pedagogic knowledge may have managed to obtain better employment and an enhanced status within colonial society. This more ambiguous status of pedagogic knowledge was displayed at the lectures analysed in this article. Their very existence and their contents show that a purely practical and routineoriented teacher education was not desirable, no matter the poverty of the normal schools and the basic level of their training.