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that the kids were very regimented. You would go to a 

 nursery school, for example, the kids would drill and all 

 stand up at the same time -- and "Now, children, it's time 

 to play," in an organized way, and so forth. It was really 

 very distressing to see how rigorously organized these 

 little children were, let alone the upper grades. 



The second thing that was bad was what they called a 

 syllabus. Both in the high school and the university, what 

 the students are supposed to learn is established by a 

 syllabus. What the are supposed to do is to learn 

 everything that's in that syllabus, and essentially nothing 

 else. This kills individuality of teaching, it kills good 

 teaching, and it kills good students. 



Sharp: They were examined then on the basis of the — . 



Revelle: Of the syllabus, yes. It's a lack of freedom in teaching ^ 

 thought was quite serious for good students and for good 

 professors. It's okay for poor students and poor 

 professors. 



The other things that were very unsatisfactory were 

 the libraries. Most of the libraries were locked. They had 

 shelves of books but they were all padlocked. 



Sharp: Why was that? 



Revelle: Well, I guess the students would walk off with them if they 

 weren't padlocked, but in any case, most of the universities 

 have no open bookshelves . 



Some of them did. I remember the University of the 

 Punjab did, and maybe the Hindu University did too. 



The thing I remember most about the Hindu University 

 library was they had a whole room about the size of this 

 living room piled from floor to ceiling with books with 

 bamboo-leaf pages. These were a thousand years old or more. 

 This was before they had paper in India. These things were 

 all mildewing and decaying. They were just stacked up there 

 in that humid climate, and they would be lost in a few 

 years. It was a shame. But they didn't have any money to 

 curate them or to take care of them. Maybe they didn't 

 care. 



In general, Indians are not much interested in 

 history. They very rarely know the history of their own 

 country. All the history books on India were written by 

 Englishmen because the English are very much interested in 

 history. 



One of the members of the Education Commission was a 

 man named Mathur, who was an economist and I think had taken 

 an advanced degree at Harvard. He never got over being a 

 Harvard alumnus, he loved being a Harvard alumnus. He later 

 became vice chancellor or the University of Jdaipur in 

 Rajistan. I think he is still active in some 

 educational-economic capacity. Educationist capacity. They 

 call themselves "educationists." His specialty was the 



