The Anglican Mission Schools
The mission schools were used by the missionaries as a source of converts to Christianity. The Rajah James Brooke used the schools as a source of English language graduates to work in the civil service and local European commercial houses. The Chinese viewed them as a pathway to the Cambridge School Certificate which was a passport to clerical positions. The Dyaks fulfilled the missionary quest of conversion.
In formulating his plan for the missionaries, Rajah James Brooke wanted people “who would live quietly, practice medicine, relieve the distressed, who do not dispute or argue and aim to educate the children. He did not want zealots and intolerants and enthusiasts who preach on tubs and began a torrent of abuse on what the children hold sacred”.
In November 1847 a committee was formed to establish the Borneo Church Mission Institute whose immediate aim was to establish a church, mission house and schools “to extend the blessings of Christianity throughout the Island of Borneo”. Accordingly, two missionaries, the priest doctor Reverend Francis Thomas McDougall and the Reverend William Bodham Wright with their respective wives arrived in Kuching on 29 June 1848.
McDougall and Wright began to try and convert the Malays. James Brooke, on becoming the First white Rajah, had agreed to protect the Malay culture. He, therefore, refused to allow the group to convert the Malays. Rather, he insisted the missionaries work among the Dyaks but he said there will be great “forbearance and prudence” to work with them.
The initial educational work, established by the Reverend Wright, was the Day School for Malay men and boys. The school progressed sluggishly with low and irregular attendance. The trading season and war with the pirates was thought to have been the reasons for not coming to school. However, it was the Hadjis who were to blame.
The jealousy of the Hadjis was attributed to the Malays not attending the school. These Hadjis, who had performed the journey to the Holy Land were respected members of the Malay community. They also functioned as religious teachers. The Hadjis were prejudiced against the schools because their income from religious teachings would be greatly diminished if the Malays sent their children to the free school. The Hadjis were also suspicious of the real intentions of the missionaries because the instructors were professors of the Christian faith.
Reverend Wright departed in 1849 and several attempts were made to make the school workable. There was a lack of competent school staff and teachers. With the Rajahs and the Malays insistence on the non-conversion of the Malays, the Rev. McDougall did not give much priority to the school.
In 1852, the Datu Bandar proposed the school be opened in the kampongs. Datuk Bandar offered his house as a school. He attended classes but the school was short-lived and closed
five months later.
The Chinese Day School opened its doors in early 1851. The arrival of the Penangat Chinese from Dutch Borneo was its’ students. They seemed eager to learn. Reverend McDougall could only accept 13 students, nine boys and four girls. A Chinese assistant named Ayoon and a missionary from Bishops College in Calcutta name James Fox both taught at the school.
Another Chinese school opened in the bazaar. It taught both Chinese and English. However, the school was not successful because most of the population had left for the goldfields upriver. The school was then incorporated into the Chinese Day School where English dominated the curriculum. A few Malay pupils, from the defunct Kampong school, also joined in.
The Rajah was supportive of the schools and allowed Reverend McDougall to draw rice from the public fund to feed the children and later provided a monthly stipend to support the school. He entrusted four war orphans into the care of the mission.
The Home School was McDougall’s idea to take children from their homes and feed, clothing and educating them without the influence of the Malay culture. He considered it “the nucleus of an Institution that will one day supply a Native Ministry for Borneo.” The result was a mixed lot whose children came from displaced families. There were half-caste war orphans whose European fathers had died and the native mothers gave them willingly to the mission to be raised. There were students from war captives. The Chinese war refugees from Dutch Borneo were also included. There were Chinese children whose fathers were killed in the 1857 uprising Each child was baptized and entrusted to the mission for ten years to be brought up in the Christian tradition. Both the Rajah and the Bishop Daniel Wilson of Calcutta who visited Sarawak in 1851 to consecrate St. Thomas Church supported Reverend McDougalls educational work especially the Home School
To maintain closer supervision over the Chinese Day Schools it was decided in July 1852 to combine both schools in the bazaar with the one in the mission compound and move them to College Hill under the charge of Fox. English dominated the curriculum. The course work included reading and writing in Malay, Chinese and English, spelling, diction, simple arithmetic, geography and church studies. The Chinese Day School was supported by the mission and the Brooke Government. The Home School was conducted separately from the Chinese Day School.
The curriculum included practical subjects like sewing, gardening, carpentry besides reading, writing and basic arithmetic.
Mrs McDougall started a class for Malay girls and women who were taught reading and sewing. The idea of a female education came from McDougall himself He stated “the fact that Malay women and girls learning to read at all is a great advantage with these (Malay) people”. The success of the girls tutorial under Mrs McDougall was discouraging. However, by 1864 she had fourteen girls and the wealthy Chinese were anxious to put their daughters in the school.
From the very start of the McDougall Home School, the Chinese dominated the student population and continued to outnumber the other races throughout the Brooke rule. The major problem was the lack of trained teachers. Appeals went out to England but to no avail. The school could not pay close to the going rates for teachers. The school acquired the name St. Thomas around the end of the nineteenth century.
St. Thomas remained the foremost educational institution in Sarawak throughout Brooke rule and the pride of the Anglican Mission. St. Thomas school provided a western education with an academic-oriented curriculum. The school received the bulk of contributions from the Brooke government and overseas contributors. The pupils were oriented into Standards based on their age. In 1889 the school had until Standard IV. Standard VII was added in 1892(?).
By pre-WWII, the school’s curriculum included reading, writing, arithmetic and English Literature and Science in the senior subjects. Other subjects included cultivation of vegetables, map drawing, shorthand, typewriting and bookkeeping. In 1933 it was decided to combine the Lower School of St. Thomas with the Lower school of St. Marys (the girls’ counterpart). The move was made to effect better grading and better supervision of the work of the teachers, therefore, ensuring far more rapid progress in the middle and higher schools. The Junior Mixed School was an unqualified success.
The Anglican Mission Schools in the Outstations
The Brooke Rajahs, to avoid undue complications, allocated specific areas of operations for their pastoral and educational work. The Anglicans worked in the First and Second Divisions. The Roman Catholics operated mainly in Rejang of the Third Division and at Bau among the Singghi Dyaks. The American Methodists worked among the populous Foo Chow immigrant community in and around Sibu and with the Ibans of Bawang Assan and those of Kapit. The Seventh Day Adventists Mission has a small school at Ayer Manis on the Kuching-Serian road and the newly arrived Australian based Borneo Evangelical Mission was given the Fifth Division.
The earliest Anglican Mission were the Dayaks at Lundu. In January of 1853, the Reverend William Henry Gomes who arrived from Calcutta opened the mission at Lundu. By 1857 his school only had seven pupils. By 1862, the school attendance improved almost equalling those in Kuching. Bishop McDougall withdrew eight or nine students in 1862. In 1863, Gomes proposed to open a home school to the Bishop. No mention was made of the results of those talks. The school and church closed in 1904 when the Sebuyau Dyaks migrated.
Bishop McDougall set up a school for the mining settlement at Bau when the Penangkat Chinese moved from Kuching in the early 1850s. By early 1863 the school had 14 regular scholars and a Chinese Christian teacher. Bishop McDougall decided to close it. (there is some confusion here because the town was destroyed by the Dyaks after the Chinese invaded Kuching in 1857)
A mission school was set up at Quop in the late 1850s. However, school attendance did not exceed 15 students at any one time. In 1924, it was reported that the St. James School became known. held 30 boys. There were plans for a girls school. Besides Quop the other Bidayuh areas with schools included Ta-I, Bunuk, Merdang (Murdong) and Duras. The schools at Ta-I and Bunuk closed quickly.
The educational labours of the Anglican Missions in the outstations did not achieve much. In Lundu and Bau, it was the migration of the people that caused the schools to close. The Bidayuh schools of St. James School and St. Johns School in the Quop area showed limited success.
From: Mission Education in Sarawak during the period of Brooke Rule 1840-1946 by Ooi Keat Gin in the Sarawak Museum Journal December 1991.
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