There was something in its chemistry of ideas and information that made it different from any other course I had taught. In the mid-1990s, Jesus and Mary College (JMC) in the capital admitted the first batch of young women in this new course. For quite some time, people found its acronym name hard to pronounce, partly because it referred to an unfamiliar territory of knowledge: “Elementary Education”. What does a university have to do with it, people asked when the proposal was placed on the agenda of the Academic Council of Delhi University (DU). The then Vice-Chancellor, Upendra Baxi, was a teacher and theorist of law. He successfully argued for its approval, and a course that gained global fame within a few years started.
Every Friday morning, I drove from the north campus to JMC across the city for a double period. I carried on for two years. The excitement of teaching the first batch of out-of-school students whose aim was to become elementary school teachers has survived intact in my memory. It is time to place it on record, when the B.El.Ed course is facing an uncertain future.
What is contemporary India like? Once it had settled in their minds, the question never stopped rocking the students. They wanted to discuss every shred of evidence they had picked up from their own life and from the other segments of the B.El.Ed. It was a rollercoaster chemistry of knowledge. An unusual ingredient of this chemistry was the analysis of the primary and upper-primary curriculum that the students were required to do. And then there was an investigative project to study the genealogy of an industrial product. The first year at college could hardly be more exciting.
The first batch graduated as the 20th century ended. By then, the course was running in eight colleges. Delhi’s educational world noticed something uncanny as the B.El.Ed trained teachers started to get jobs. Principals felt their spark. Their grasp of school subjects was just as good as their knowledge of the way children think. Teachers trained by other, more conventional, courses also knew child psychology, but the B.El.Ed teacher understood that neither cognition nor learning can be dissociated from a child’s social context.
School principals also noticed the indomitable spirit of these teachers. They refused to be defeated by lack of resources or by the gossip culture of staff rooms. Some of them returned to the university for Master’s level studies. They qualified to become teacher educators themselves. In selection interviews, if a candidate used Piaget and Giroux while arguing, you could be sure that she had done B.El.Ed. I am not surprised that Giroux, one of America’s celebrated social analysts of education, has signed a plea seeking the continuation of B.El.Ed. Other signatories include Christopher Winch, England’s best known philosopher of education, Kenneth Zeichner, who holds the Boeing chair in teacher education at Seattle University, and Edward Vickers who holds the Unesco chair in Japan’s Kyushu University. A few months back, Vickers delivered the Gijubhai memorial lecture at JMC. The collective appeal made by these scholars to DU demonstrates the global fame of B.El.Ed.
They are puzzled why this world-class course should be threatened. It seems that DU wants to replace it with a course proposed in the new education policy. Why can’t that new course be introduced in other colleges? DU has more than 70 constituent colleges. If B.El.Ed goes, it will be remembered as an innovation that made a mark but could not change the mindset. It made a breakthrough of the kind NCERT and NCTE could only fantasise about. In its short life of less than three decades, B.El.Ed faced every possible bureaucratic impasse. The strangest obstacles had to do with the term “elementary”.
With Parliament’s approval of the Right to Education (RTE), one assumed that, at long last, eight years of elementary education would become the norm. This expectation seriously underestimated the burden of history that India’s system of education loves to carry. Every state, including Delhi, was used to the separate existence of “primary” and “upper primary” stages. Their separation is so sharp that a graduate teacher with B.El.Ed can’t get the salary grade that goes with the label “Trained Graduate Teacher”. To jump over this bizarre bureaucratic hurdle, B.El.Ed holders had to approach the courts. Within the university system, too, they had to fight for their right to get admission to the MA level courses of their choice.
They fought and they won. A few years ago, I was invited to take a few B.El.Ed classes in Miranda House. One of the activities I recall doing was this: “Imagine that you meet India one day on the road. What question would you like to ask in your brief meeting?” One of the students wrote: “I will ask why do you (i.e. India) make us fight for every little thing?”
Perhaps it is too early to write the obituary of this unique teacher education course. I find it strange and sad that the new policy document does not celebrate the B.El.Ed as an outstanding Indian achievement in a moribund field like teacher education. But then, the policy does not acknowledge the past. Struggles and accomplishments are equally ignored, the assumption being that something totally unknown needs to be put in place. But if the policy’s support for innovations is to be taken seriously, it must encourage DU to sustain one of its greatest recent innovations.
An international conference on teacher training held in Udaipur a few years ago acknowledged the problems this sector faces in many countries. In India, the late Justice JS Verma led a Commission appointed by the Supreme Court to inquire why teacher education is in such a sad state. His report provides deep insights and guidance for the future. It eloquently supports different routes for preparing teachers. The uncertainty that surrounds the B.El.Ed programme today is not entirely unusual in our “one size fits all” ethos. It has survived all these years despite continuous shortage of funds and faculty. Its life-long struggle gives me the hope that it will continue to win renewed support from DU.
The writer is a former Director of NCERT
