Colonial Education and Class Formation in Early Judaism A Postcolonial Reading

Author: Dr. Royce M. Victor
Title: Colonial Education and Class Formation in Early Judaism A

Postcolonial Reading

Publisher: T&T Clark International, London and New York,2010.



Brief summary: History reveals that colonizers effectively made use of

education as a device to propagate their cultural values, ethos and

lifestyle among the colonized. The primary aim of the colonial

education program was to create a separate class of people who were

not only meek and suppliant in their attitudes towards the colonizers,

but also felt a degree of loathing for their fellow citizens. This

class was formed mainly to establish an effective imperial

administration and channel of communication between the colonizers and

the millions they governed. Taking the colonial education system as

one of the major analytical categories, this study makes an inquiry

into how colonialism functioned and continues to function in both the

ancient and the modern world. Based on the Books of Maccabees, Ben

Sira, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, and early rabbinic

literature, The author seeks to determine how the institution of the

gymnasium was used to educate the elites and enable Greek citizens,

Hellenes, and Hellenistic Jews to function politically, ethnically,

and economically within the larger Greek empire, and particularly in

Judea, by creating a separate class of the “Hellenized Jews” among the

Jewish population. It further reveals the continuity of the role of

the colonial education system in forming a class structure among the

colonized by exploring a similar historical incident in the British

colonial era in India, and demonstrates how the British education

introduced into colonial India in the early nineteenth century played

a similar role in creating a distinct class of the “Brown Englishmen”

among the Indians.




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Royce M. Victor, Ph.D.

K.U.T. Seminary, Kannammoola

Trivandrum 695 011

Kerala, INDIA