Scrapping of DU’s B.El.Ed course: The teachers who could have been
Krishna Kumar | 2 June 2023 | The Indian Express
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.