Montessori for all? Indian experiments in ‘child education’, 1920s–1970s

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article discusses the ‘Indianisation’, ‘nationalisation’, and ‘ruralisation’ of the Montessori method in India at the eve, and in the aftermath of the country’s political independence (1947). From 1914 onwards, Indian nationalists received Montessori’s ideas through publications, the networks of the new education movement, and the Theosophical Society. While innovative pre-schools for elite children worked closely with the ‘original’ method, the Nutan Bal Shikshan Sangh (‘New Child Education Society’, NBSS) adapted it to local conditions (‘Indianisation’). The NBSS aimed to universalise Montessori-based child education, as a contribution to nation-building (‘nationalisation’). With the establishment of the Gram Bal Shiksha Kendra (Rural Child Education Centre), in 1945, the NBSS brought the country’s most marginalised into the modernising reach of the new state, furthering Gandhi’s vision of ‘rural reconstruction’ (‘ruralisation’). From these experiments, the institutional model of the Anganwadi emerged, through which today millions of Indian children receive integrated child development services.