Eminent Indian Educationists : Their Life and Thoughts Marjorie Sykes - a Profile Anil Sethi*

3 Eminent Indian Educationists : Their Life and Thoughts Marjorie Sykes - A Profile Anil Sethi* Some of you would have heard of Marjorie Sykes (1905-1995), one of the outstanding school teachers and educationalists in India. Not only are Sykes’s life and work a great inspiration, she also offered innumerable insights into education, schools and teaching as a calling. This short essay introduces you to the educational world of Marjorie Sykes. Sykes was one of those foreigners who chose to become Indian because India held out an extraordinary charm for her. She first savoured this Madras (now Chennai). She stayed through the ideas and examples of on until the 1990s, absorbed in a some of the stalwarts of our national wide variety of ideas, activities and movement. British by birth, Sykes projects inspired by Gandhi, Tagore, came to India in the autumn of 1928 C.F. Andrews and various Christian to teach at Bentick Girls’ High School, traditions, notably Quakerism1. Marjorie Sykes painted life on * Professor, Department of Education in Social Sciences and Humanities, NCERT New Delhi 1 Quakerism: a Christian movement devoted to peaceful principles, eschewing formal doctrine, sacraments, and ordained ministers and believing in the inward authority of experience. The Quakers’ emphasis on spiritual equality, made them sensitive to social justice. They were empathetic to the cause of Indian nationalism and many of them were Mahatma Gandhi’s trusted friends. Sykes was so influenced by the movement and its work in India that she authored the book, Quakers in India: A Forgotten Century (London, 1980). a vast canvas. She had a multi- the kids' booklets of poems chosen faceted personality and many for their humour, beauty or mystery. different interests: spirituality, an He would retell history in a manner involvement with nature, walking that would awaken the reader’s and climbing, crafts, languages, human sympathies. And in doing all dramatics, philosophy, writing, rural this, he would involve Marjorie who transformation, the peace movement, eagerly joined in the stitching of the diplomacy, political negotiations, home made books never viewed it as Quaker work and education of course. drudgery.2 Her educational ideas drew upon these Sykes finished the English Tripos diverse streams of thought and action. (Honours degree) with first division In the ultimate analysis, however, she at Cambridge University with a short strove to educate for simplicity, beauty thesis on William Blake. She could and equity. have easily carried on with higher Early Life and Models for Children studies in English but her fascination Born in a Yorkshire family of rather for father’s work led her towards school modest means – her father served as teaching. She spent another year at a headmaster in poor 'coal mining Cambridge, trained to be a teacher and village school' – Marjorie and her two after successful training she looked siblings were raised in comparative for teaching opportunities in Africa poverty but also in thrift, cleanliness and Asia. When she was offered a and piety. She was educated in the position at the Bentick High School at local schools before she was able to Chennai, an institution ran by the Lond join Newnham College, Cambridge, on Missionary Society, she gladly with a college scholarship for the study accepted it. of English Language. Bentick High School, Chennai While in college, she would often Sykes’s upbringing and prior training work with her father on his projects. stood her in good stead at the Bentick Her father would try to design practical School. Through her parents she had working models, simple enough for imbibed how children are zestfully school children to make and operate moved by discovery and achievement, themselves, through which they might by fun and adventure, by imagination learn about machines encountered and compassion. Her father never in daily life. He would produce for stereotyped people, social groups 2 The details of Sykes’s life and work have been taken either from her own writings or from Martha Dart, Marjorie Sykes: Quaker-Gandhian (London, n.d.). Dart’s book is perhaps the only biography of Marjorie Sykes. I have used the electronic version of the book. It is available through the link to ‘books on education’ at www.arvindguptatoys.com. Arvind Gupta is an outstanding educationalist, science- educator and toy maker. Marjorie Sykes - A Profile 13 or nations. He also taught her ‘to barefoot and slept on grass mats on carry out one’s duty uninfluenced by the floor. In the halls of residence, personal desire.… There’s only one each child’s clothing and personal thing that matters – learning to be articles fitted into just a small box. unselfish’.3 Marjorie was to learn more Children of various religions and about this later in India in the form of castes were admitted on equal terms ‘nishkama karma’. Furthermore, her and resident children ate the same Cambridge teachers had inspired her food from the same kitchen, regardless to contribute in some way towards of caste. It was not unusual for international peace and social justice. Brahmin students to clear away leaf Many of them had seen this as the plates or clean utensils used by ‘low message of Jesus to be communicated caste’ people. to young minds and through an As Principal, Marjorie Sykes education that made them ‘think abolished competitions and prizes globally but act locally’. In any case, and ‘the self centred rivalry they even as a child of nine, Marjorie had provoked’5. She emphasised values abhorred war. She always remembered of cooperation and instituted a system the ‘heavy sense of disaster that that encouraged the quicker children hung in the air’ when the World to help the slower ones in their studies War I broke out and how the – ‘they did it much more effectively hostilities had suddenly transformed than adults could do!’6 Physical a beloved German teacher into an education programmes were not ‘enemy alien’.4 planned to train a few star performers In 1928 Bentick was a relatively to win laurels, ‘but to improve every small school (less than 350 children child’s health and skill’7. from kindergarten to the final class) Bentick and Sykes did not draw and a closely knit community. It the distinction between ‘curricular had a hostel, although all students subjects’ and ‘extra curricular activities’ were not residents. The teachers and that so many Indian schools have students knew one another and ‘cared always maintained – a distinction that for one another like a big family’. Given the National Curriculum Framework Chennai’s climate, the school kept of 2005 seeks to abolish. English minimal furniture and its members and music, for instance, were taught rarely wore sandals. They moved together. The sweeping of floors, 3 Martha Dart, Marjorie Sykes: Quaker-Gandhian, p 8. 4 Ibid., p. 9. 5 Jehangir P. Patel and Marjorie Sykes, Gandhi: His Gift of the Fight (Goa, 1987), p. 43. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., p. 44. 14 The Primary Teacher : April 2009 cleaning the building and tending gives true freedom’9 but this can to plants were all as significant as happen only when it succeeds in the learning the three Rs. The former were ‘the all-round drawing out of the best treated as core educational concerns, in child and man – body, mind and something that Sykes learnt as much spirit’10. The short paragraph that from Gandhi and Tagore as from her Gandhiji published on this matter in own education. the Harijan of 31 July 1937 stirred Gandhi, Tagore and Sykes Sykes to the very depth of her being: ‘Those few sentences drove everything It was this thinking, followed not only at else out of my mind. I was excited, Bentick but wherever she taught, that I read them again and again, and I made her so excited about Gandhi’s still remember clearly the words that first public pronouncement of his educational agenda in 1937. Gandhi’s came into my head: “Here is someone ideas, advocated and practised as Nai talking real sense about education Talim have received extensive analyses at last!” I looked eagerly for the next elsewhere.8 Suffice it to say here, Harijan, and the next, and followed Gandhi urged that the resources of the controversies which Gandhiji’s 11 everyday living and work be exploited proposals had aroused.’ for educative purposes. Education was In 1939 Rabindranath Tagore meant for understanding and facing invited Marjorie Sykes as a life, whichever way it may unfold. ‘representative of English culture’12 to But educational practices were also teach at Shantiniketan. This was the to be constructed through life itself. chance of a lifetime. Not only did Sykes The Gandhian paradigm implied the obtain access to Tagore’s experiments learner’s active involvement with in education and community living but his or her existential condition and she could study how these related to with her society, so that she could Gandhian methods. There were many work out her emancipation from links between Tagore and Gandhi drudgery and exploitation. As Gandhi and much coming and going between stressed, ‘education is that which 18 See, for instance, Marjorie Sykes, The Story of Nai Talim: Fifty Years of Education at Sevagram; 1937- 1987 (Sevagram. 1987); Krishna Kumar, ‘Listening to Gandhi’ in Rajni Kumar, Anil Sethi and Shalini Sikka (Eds.), School, Society, Nation: Popular Essays in Education (Delhi, 2005); G Ramanthan, Education from Dewey to Gandhi: The Theory of Basic Education (Bombay, 1962); Sitaramayya, Basic Education: The Need of the Day (Wardha, 1952); and Anil Sethi, ‘Education for life, Through Life: A Gandhian Paradigm’ in Christopher Winch, First Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Lecture (New Delhi, 2007). 19 Quoted by J.D.

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