My Journey for Reform: From Harvard to the corridors of Delhi Government Schools

by Mridul Batra

One of the closest disciples of Sri Aurobindo, Nolini Kanta Gupta, spoke about true education as the growth of consciousness. He said – A growing child is nothing but a growing consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo himself had a remarkable vision for human progress.

He said:

The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher is not an instructor or taskmaster; he is a helper and a guide. His business is to suggest, not to impose. He does not actually train the pupil’s mind; he only shows him how to perfect his instruments of knowledge and helps and encourages him in the process.

Our children carry immense possibility and infinite potential within them. They are the future citizens of the world. When they grow up, they can transform and create a better world if only they receive a true education. For that to happen, they need a safe space where they can enjoy the freedom of self-learning and self-expression.

Prakriti School was founded in Noida in 2010, and I am one of its founders. In my continuing journey here as a facilitator, I experienced my own self continuously forming and shaping in an unending process of being and becoming through learning. 

I have always been a teacher at heart.

At university and afterwards, while working with Citibank, I volunteered to teach economics to children. I did this for many years. When I returned from Harvard with a Master’s degree in education, working at a school was a natural decision.

Harvard gave me the courage and conviction to work in the public education space in India.

I had developed a strong conviction that things can be done and that it is possible to bring about change in the field of education in India.  I started looking for alternative education models in the country. I had a vision and a dream of creating a space of learning for children that would be different from the others.

But I was not sure how it would be different. 

I soon met Manish Jain (also a fellow Harvard alumnus from the Education School) from Shikshantar, who had set up Creativity Adda at a government school in Daryaganj, Delhi. Incidentally, my father taught for 30 years at this very school. In a way, life came full circle, as it sometimes does.

Visits to the learning space created by Manish happened very often. Manish, too, had studied at Harvard. He was already a rebel against the conventional education system, comparing schools to prisons. His thoughts were radical.

In my mind, I was chasing my dreams of creating my own space for learning. Gradually, I started visiting other institutions that were pioneering new forms of education in other parts of the country. I immersed myself in this process. Manish took me to Manzil, a not-for-profit that gets children from government schools and works with them on their vocational capabilities in a pioneering after-school programme.

This is when I met Ravi Gulati, who invited me to join a facilitation project run by the government at its State Council of Educational Research and Training in New Delhi. This organisation is the state counterpart of NCERT, the National Council of Educational Research and Training of India. A new government in Delhi was intent on creating change in schools. For me, this was a path-breaking opportunity to work in the education space more deeply, beyond the classroom. 

The programme was designed to empower principals with skills that would lead the transformation of their own schools and help them enable teachers to become facilitators in the classroom. The programme started with just 50 schools. These 50 were each named a model government school. It put all its efforts into improving them in every possible way, including infrastructure, the training of teachers, and the development of principals into true school leaders.

I was an outsider.

I observed positive characteristics that, because of my prejudice, I had not imagined existed.

One trait stood out: the openness of the principals to change themselves and to bring change to the large number of learners they had a direct influence on—many a time, they ran into over 3000 learners. In this way, I was introduced to the idea of facilitation. Later on, the wholehearted participation and engagement of principals in the programme inspired me to become increasingly involved in the process.

I dove in with all this energy and enthusiasm.

Eventually, this transformed me into a direct facilitator of the programme under the mentorship of Darshan Bhat and Ravi Gulati, who both founded Creatnet Education.

I started working with small groups.

Gradually, the programme expanded. The model of the programme was mapped out for participants in an innovative way. Each principal was supposed to facilitate his own cluster of 10 other principals.

The programme now covered a thousand principals, and I had to start working with a larger group of them. I became a coach, formally called a facilitator developer. I’d work with a few facilitators, and those facilitators in turn would then go into their own clusters and work with 10–15 principals in each cluster.

I used to visit these groups once in a while.

By the third year of this journey I became responsible for creating change and enabling learning and transformation in over 100 hundred government schools through the cycle of silence, action and reflection.

The core idea of the program was based on the perception and belief of the principals and teachers about teachers and students respectively. The concern was whether the principals believed that the teachers can teach, and whether the teachers believed that students can learn.

So, a lot of conversations with the principals started happening around this thought and a lot of false beliefs and mental blocks were removed from the minds of all in the process. In that way, some powerful learning circles were formed which were very motivating for all. They used to meet once a month and facilitate discussions on leadership, trust and being. The process continues till date and that is its biggest success - a self sustaining professional learning community!

Participants also spent time on finding solutions to practical, real world problems they were facing in their schools. This process created a lot of opportunities for all of them to learn about issues deeply which became the biggest motivator for all the participants of the program because knowledge gifted them a sense of empowerment. They also talked a lot about the cycle of silence, action reflection and refelctionaction that enables learning and worked on it. 

There were four parts, or steps, we followed.

The first part or first step was the idea of working on one’s own being or self and one’s beliefs about children, learning, and leadership. It was a process of developing one’s inner leader from within, and in that step, the participants were introduced to silent practices like meditation and mindfulness. It helped them connect to their pure inner self, or inner subconscious mind, and reflect deeply on the learnings from the previous sessions.

In the second part, or step, concrete tools were handed out to the principals to enable and practice effective school leadership.

The third part and step of the programme was about deep self-awareness, mindful listening, and being able to do problem solving for the schools that could gradually transform them into learning organizations. This was all about listening and problem-solving.

The fourth part and step were about creating accountability for each other’s learning and sharing stories of each other’s successes and failures in the process. In this way, a circular process of accountability was created between the facilitator and the different groups of principals, which in turn enabled the process of cross-learning among schools. 

I always wished to look at schools from a different perspective.

I fulfilled this wish by creating a free, noncoercive learning space that enables children to experience their inner being and express themselves freely. This inspiration for Prakriti came from my learning experience at the National Institute of Design, where I had gone to learn photography, of all things!

At NID, I was truly exposed to the space of art and design for the first time in my life, so well and so deeply that it activated my aesthetic and artistic senses and creativity in many ways. My experiences as a facilitator later, together, shaped the background for preparing me more practically and realistically to become a school leader at Prakriti. 

The greatest change that happened to me in the process of understanding facilitation was becoming a deep listener. It helped me create deeper connections with others and influence them positively in the right direction. Thus, I became a self-aware listener and remained in the present moment while listening to the stories of others, is one quality that I have tried to nurture over the years. Apart from deep listening, my deeper learnings from the experiences of the facilitation programme gave me a sense of empowerment that also enabled me to be a good leader. 

The whole process of facilitation was endearing because it gave me a scope for learning unendingly not only about other things or other beings but also about my own being. Observing these changes quickly became the biggest motivation. The process was encouraging because I was able to come out of my comfort zone and work extensively on myself. I was also able to touch so many lives because of my presence in this space.

The final source of my motivation was when I could return to the community government school in a district of Delhi where I was raised.

This was the school where my mother was an educator for almost 30 years. I would often go pick her up from the school when I could, walking distance from our home; and this time, it was working with the Principal at the same school and work through a change agenda!

It was a moment of my greatest pride.

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Mridul brings over a decade and a half of experience in education, transitioning from a successful career in banking and leading a creative design and art collective. He currently plays a pivotal role at Prakriti, an alternate K–12 school in the Delhi National Capital Region. In the past, he has helped to shape a pioneering leadership development programme for the principals of Delhi’s government schools. 

Mridul holds a BA in Economics from Delhi University, an MS  in Economics from the National University of Singapore, and an Ed.M. from Harvard. Mridul also trained in photography design at the prestigious National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. His passion for education is combined with a keen interest in photography and design.

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