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.