Forced Education for Exploitation in Sri Lanka

The Dutch East India Company forced over 14,000 Sri Lankan kids into school, but it wasn't for

their benefit. In the 1700s, this trading company used Protestant churches to control

the local population. They made school attendance mandatory, with schoolmasters acting as spies,

recording every birth, baptism, and marriage. If your parents

weren't married in the church, you were considered "illegitimate" and couldn't even go

to school. But here's the twist: school wasn't about learning. It was a system

to track children until they were old enough for forced labor. The graduation ceremony

was literally called a "discharge," releasing them from school duty into caste-based service for the