Multigrade Instruction at Rishi Valley and Neel Bagh

Recent surveys of the education scenario in India’s countryside highlight the fact that within a single classroom student learning levels vary greatly. Multigrade classrooms, i.e. classrooms where student competency levels are identified, and each student is enabled to move at his or her own pace, are the need of the hour. This essay examines multigrade classroom structures pioneered in south India by Gordon F. Pearce at Rishi Valley School and David Horsburgh at Neel Bagh. A no less important purpose of the essay is to show that the culture of multigrade classrooms of Pearce’s and Horsburgh’s design, though very different, promoted a vision of education enunciated by Rishi Valley’s founder, J. Krishnamurti.

Celebrating Diversities

Previously, scholars who have extensively researched inclusion have argued that some schools, under the shroud of being inclusive, are inherently and discreetly exclusionary. Following this, the chapter evaluates how inclusive education unfolds within the walls of the Valley school. It navigates through the waters of the student-teacher relationship at the school which is combined with Jiddu Krishnamurti’s philosophy in the setting of mixed-age classrooms that encourage dialogue and participation from all students. This chapter argues that inclusion in the junior-school takes place precisely because the school celebrates diversity of every child without holding a strict benchmark for an ideal student. The main focus here is to analyse the processes that successfully combine to enable inclusion as opposed to assimilation – a concept that has been recklessly assumed to be identical to inclusion. The chapter also engages with a pertinent question: is inclusion a possible future for all our schools?

A Space Sans Fear

Fear is one of the foremost debilitating factors that hinder an individual’s growth, and one of the cornerstones of mainstream competitive schooling in India. The presence of fear in the process of schooling has great significance in the way it shapes an individual and affects learning. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the ways in which education can be imparted without the operation of fear, by looking at the everyday practices, rituals and built form of a KFI school in Bengaluru. Through an ethnographic exploration, the author attempts to interpret the micro processes of everyday life in the school and pedagogic practices employed across junior, middle and senior school classrooms that work in collusion to create an environment free of fear. Through a case study of contradictions, the author also looks at the possible factors that may work against the creation of such a space.

Going beyond the Self1

This chapter is a study of the efforts of Rishi Valley Institute for Educational Resources (RIVER) to transform teacher education in India; it explores the aims, intents and structure of RIVER’s Teacher Enrichment Programme (RTEP). Through RTEP, RIVER seeks to supplement the implementation of the Diploma in Elementary Education (DElEd) programme in teacher education institutes across Andhra Pradesh. RTEP is grounded in the educational philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti and places immense faith in the compassionate role of the teacher; it may be read as RIVER’s application of Krishnamurti’s ideas to the contemporary context of Indian teacher education. In attempting to bring about teacher self-knowledge in its content and form, as well as openness in its method of dissemination, RTEP responds to the existing institutional challenges of teacher education in India. In doing so, this chapter argues, RTEP represents and reflects the tremendous power, foresight, and malleability of Krishnamurti’s philosophical thought.

Child-Centred Learning in Praxis

Placing the larger concepts of MGML, the notions of child-centred learning and key ideas of J. Krishnamurti on education at the centre of analysis, this chapter documents the translation of these concepts in everyday classroom life in a rural context of the satellite schools of Rishi Valley. It explores the ‘School in a box’ tool used in these schools and its instrumentality in engendering classroom processes that re-center the child’s autonomy in the learning process by rearranging the use of time, space, objects, and teacher-student relationships in the classroom. It also explores the learning and living continuum between the school and community life, and corporeal experience of learning in the MGML classroom. It also discusses the challenges in the classroom including the management of multiple learning contexts in the MGML classroom and the dual role of the teacher as facilitator and continuous assessor.

Philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti in the Educational Practice of the Multigrade–Multilevel Methodology

Very close to his death, Krishnamurti made sure that ‘The Rishi Valley School’ starts with small schools in the surrounding remote villages. The so-called Satellite Schools exist now for more than 30 years and have inspired thousands of schools worldwide by their MultiGradeMultiLevel-Methodology. More than the methodology it seems to be the attitude of the teachers that bring children as well as themselves ‘in the driver’s seat’ and realize therefore schools that run without fear—an aim Krishnamurti always focussed on. The contribution briefly introduces the educational ideas of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s philosophy and shows how they can be identified in the MultiGradeMultiLevel-Methodology and its ideas of teacher education.

Krishnamurti’s Dialogue as Being Open to the ‘Other’

In this chapter, an attempt has been made to reflect on some central questions of education, such as knowing, knowledge, knower, and the relationship between the educator and the educand. This attempt is rooted in the ideas of Jiddu Krishnamurti who not only lectured in many countries but also established schools to concretize his ideas and transformed the prevalent understanding of schooling. Thus, this attempt includes a discussion of some prominent ideas from the talks and lectures of Krishnamurti and a reflection on his idea of school as an institution and the process of schooling that can lead to a personal and social transformation. The chapter argues against any fixed ideas of schooling, teaching, and education in favour of a more relational and dialogical way of engagement between the educator and the educand. The importance and limits of methods, technic, and words in such a relational idea of education have also been reflected upon.

Insight through Awareness

For over fifty years, Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) spoke on a wide array of topics, but primarily directed his teachings at the problem of human suffering. He taught that all conflict is intrinsically tied to our psyches, which have been heavily conditioned by our upbringing. Aligned with other renowned Western and Eastern thinkers on the wisdom of self-discovery, Krishnamurti presents a distinctive vision for learning that encourages self-understanding through sensitive observation and choiceless awareness. He calls for a radical transformation of human consciousness, thereby enabling pliant minds to blossom. This flowering of intelligence, through a liberating insight into the mechanisms of conditioning, is at the heart of his educational philosophy. Institutions that embrace his approach must be vigilant not to succumb to the traditional modes of academic training and norms of success, lest they perpetuate the structures of fear, violence, and conformity that continue to stifle the creativity of human spirit.

Krishnamurti, Values, and Education

The chapter provides the context in which J. Krishnamurti and his work may be understood today. Krishnamurti’s relevance in our understanding of the contemporary human condition when humans can no longer be passive observers in a deeply divided and self-destructive world is examined. It is in the everyday that Krishnamurti seeks out change beginning with the individual and her world, both personal and social. This premise foregrounds his emphasis on educational practice as the medium through which social change is possible. At the same time, education is not an objective instrument but a deeply nuanced method for the transformation of consciousness and social change. To develop an understanding of the transformative value of education, it unravels Krishnamurti’s approach through a focus on education and society, the sacred and universal, and agency, values, and an ethical life. There is also an emphasis on caring for emotions and on addressing diversity in educational practice.

‘Right Relationship’ between Teachers and Students

This chapter is an ethnographic examination of the teacher-student relationship at Rishi Valley School, Andhra Pradesh, India. Departing from Krishnamurti’s vision on right relationship, the study reconfigures the pertinent dimensions of freedom, authority and hierarchy (or the lack of these) between students and teachers in the school’s everyday life. Interspersed across multiple spaces, contexts and situations, the study weaves together diverse narratives of how teachers and students grapple with challenges in their approach to build ‘right relationship’. Methodologically located at the intersection of anthropology and educational practice, the attempt is to understand educational philosophy as an action, and not merely a concept.