One less talked about aspect of Russia achieving enormous gains in literacy and education between two world wars was its policy of "korenizatsiya", trans as indigenization, or literally "putting down roots".

Mental Calculations in the school by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky. 1895.
Under this policy, which lasted from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s, the communist government promoted the development and use of various mother tongues (other than Russian) in the government, the media, and education.
An education in native-language education not only increased the overall literacy rate in Russia but also revolutionized its science and mathematics output tremendously (including in social sciences). Many great names were the products of this policy of Korenizatsiya.
The Soviet solutions included a dramatic expansion of public funding to education at all levels, the abolishment of fees for higher education, and a radical increase in the number of specialized technical schools in native languages to broaden the demographic base of science.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Anurag Shukla

Anurag Shukla Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Anuraag_Shukla

3 Jan
This. 👇

"Choosing what books to read becomes itself a moralistic enterprise, a form of atonement. One must read postcolonial literatures to pay the guilt tax. It is a reading toll that the student of the White Literature syllabus is not asked to pay."

thepointmag.com/criticism/beyo…
"Of all the literature courses students take, the texts they study are supposed to be illustrative: they are used to critique some kind of -ism that is being scolded or praised by the course instructor."
"Postcolonial texts in English literature seem to have two jobs in these syllabi: they either negatively illustrate some form of moral or social misconduct, or they positively represent a “marginalized” culture or geography."
Read 7 tweets
25 Dec 21
Just finished reading this.

This book, by Steven Patterson, tries to systematically trace the idea of honor circulated in the Raj and how it was strategically deployed to sustain the imperial mission.
The dominant ethos of British India after 1857, argues the author, was set by the upper-middle classes (instead of viceroys & governors) who came to dominate the ICS, claiming that their professional training as disinterested civil servants made them the fittest rulers of India.
If viceroys came and went, members of the ICS spent entire careers in India, and their views were often decidedly different from those of the highest elite. These ICS officers transformed themselves into autocrats in India who ostensibly ruled as 'enlightened despots'.
Read 16 tweets
24 Dec 21
"Any true morality is the diametric opposite of self-righteousness - the very thing that so often masquerades for morality. What think often as our morality is indeed a “monstrous perversion” of our ego.”

themarginalian.org/2016/12/05/joa…
Didion on Hollywood liberals;

“The public life of liberal Hollywood comprises a kind of dictatorship of good intentions, a social contract in which actual and irreconcilable disagreement is as taboo as failure or bad teeth.”
Joan Didion on Self-Respect:

"the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life.

To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent."
Read 7 tweets
23 Dec 21
After the British defeated the Peshwas in 1818, Mountstuart Elphinstone, the new governor, recognized the importance of existing educational networks- and state patronization of education - in the Company’s newly annexed domains.
Noting the “present abundance of people in education,” Elphinstone worried that “unless some exertion is made by the Government, the country will certainly be in a worse state under our rule than it under the Peishwa’s.”
From this position, the governor sketched out a policy for supporting existing vernacular-medium schools throughout the presidency, publishing school books in local languages, and also pursuing a limited program in English language education for Indian school children.
Read 6 tweets
20 Dec 21
In the 1925 text, The Culture of the Abdomen, author Fredrick Hornibrook states that medical authorities of the time were outspoken about the flawed new sitting toilet/commode designs that were launched just decades earlier. (1/4)
Sitting toilets or commodes were designed by cabinet-maker Joseph Bramah and plumber Thomas Crapper. There was no consultation with medical authorities at all, despite them raising the issues of faulty designs and suspected health consequences. (2/4)

in pic (Thomas Crapper)
But the sitting toilets were convenient for the dresses of Europe, with their pockets and tight fittings. Also, the chair toilet spoke to the European love of monarchy; Henry VIII had a sitting toilet constructed for him after he had become obese. (3/4)
Read 5 tweets
20 Dec 21
McKim Marriot’s anthology India through Hindu Categories (1990) is an important work that necessitates an intellectual recapitulation and explains why there are no equivalent western categories for many Indian conceptions and realities. (1/5)
Indian thinking, he argues, does not distinguish between the material & ideological, or between nature & culture. One does not find mutually exclusive, oppositional binaries as material vs. spiritual, body vs. soul, true vs. false, fact vs. fiction, sacred vs. profane, etc. (2/5)
Thus, a person is thought to be made of koshas (sheaths) which interpenetrate- annamaya (food-filled), manomaya (mind-filled), pranamaya (breath/life filled), vijnanamaya (wisdom/science-filled), and anandamaya (blissfilled). (3/5)
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(