| caption: |
Chapter Twenty-seven. Return to Nagaland |
| caption: |
problems of schooling and learning English |
| text: |
The medium of instruction was English, but the pupils' level of comprehension of the language was low, and this accounted presumably for their relatively poor performance. For several years none of the pupils had passed in the matriculation examination, and I wondered whether there were in Nagaland sufficient outlets for young people with a type of education which gave them ambitions beyond those of ordinary cultivators without equipping them for the harsh competition in the outside world. Yet the children at this boarding school took little part in the agricultural work of their parents, and there was the implicit expectation that they would ultimately find jobs not involving manual labour. The only people who were more or less idle even during the rush-time of the rice harvest were semi-educated young men who considered it below their dignity to work on their family's land, but had not succeeded in obtaining suitable employment. |
