Ooty: As the President Mr Pranab Mukherjee will address at the 159th Founder's day celebrations of Lawrence School at Lovedale near here, one of the oldest schools in the country, the summer tourism atmosphere in the hills is all geared up for the VVIP’s visit on Tuesday.
At this juncture, the Nilgiris Documentation Centre (NDC), a treasure house of Niligiri history, while appealing to the school administration to celebrate the event to remember its founder, took time to give a glimpse on the genesis of Lawrence group of schools in the 19th century.
Narrating how the Lawrence group of schools appeared in India, Mr D.Venugopal, director of NDC, stated that the Lawrence school, Lovedale, which will be celebrating its 159th Founder's Day on Tuesday, was a charity of the British soldier-statesman, Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence who died at Lucknow on the first day of India's First War of Independence in 1857 and who had a lot of sympathy for Indians.
It was his concern for the orphaned children of the British in India whose parents died young due to wars and disease that he started the Lawrence group of schools, he noted.
The first school was opened at Sanawar in 1847. The second was established at Mount Abu in 1855. The third at Lovedale here was mooted during his lifetime, but established a year after his death by his brother. The last, at Ghora Ghali in the Murree Hills, was started in 1860 as a memorial to Henry Lawrence, he pointed out.
The Lawrence school at Lovedale near Ooty came into existence on May 14, 1858. It functioned first in the Stonehouse (present government arts college at Ooty) building before moving into its own spacious campus in Lovedale in 1869.
Sir Henry wanted his schools to be "an asylum from the debilitating effects of the tropical climate, and the demoralising influence of barrack-life; wherein they may obtain the benefits of a bracing climate, a healthy moral atmosphere, and a plain, useful, and above all religious education, adapted to fit them for employment suited to their position in life."
The 'Lawrence Asylums' offered an education that stressed discipline, self-reliance, obedience, piety and respectability, he noted.
