Has BaLA been dumped?

Has BaLA been dumped?

India has no shortage of great ideas. One of them was of how education can be made exciting and interesting. Two young architects, Kabir and Preeti Vajpeyi, dreamt of a unique idea to be implemented in government schools in Delhi. But is the idea dying?

Devang Chaturvedi

The New Delhi Muncipal Corporation’s Middle School at Sangli Mess at Copernicus Marg in New Delhi looks just like any other neglected government school. Urban dwellers connect to fancy schools and this has a look that they do not relate to. But, hold on, this school is just not any other government school that we would imagine.

The revolutionary government initiative called Building as Learning Aid (BaLA) debuted at this school way back in 2007. The basic idea was to make learning fun. It was also to make complicated ideas easy to understand. If you stray into this unkempt school, you will see how an innovative idea has been slowly allowed to die.

Every nook and corner of the school has a concept for a student. For example, there is one painting that depicts how a marketplace works. Another helps to identify shapes and angles. There is one that explains elementary geometry and another that has mathematical grids where students could play games and learn. Then there is one where you could use alphabets to form words. At the entrance, there is a figure that helps you identify yourself, your neighbourhood, city, country and then the rest of the world.

The BaLA initiative is a brainchild of architects Kabir and Preeti Vajpeyi. The couple got interesting visuals painted on classroom walls and corridors. The motive: Learn while you have fun. But it was painted four years ago and has now faded away or has been covered with dirt. Ashok Kumar, Assistant teacher at the school points out that the BaLA initiative caught the imagination of students when it was first implemented that the response was stunning. The teachers also loved the new way

to explain concepts and fundamentals. Something as easy as the ‘various sets of lines’ or ‘how a clock works’ could be explained in just a second.

Students could be seen taking interest in identifying whatever had been painted on the walls but the interest has weaned away now.” He lamented that the NDMC has not re-painted the walls since it was implemented.

It is not just the paintings that have suffered. Stinking toilets, dying potted plants, unclean premises and messy classrooms with poor furniture tells its own tale.

Vajpeyi had earlier pointed out that funding for BaLa could be inter-disciplinary. The government, he felt, could collaborate with other agencies for the funding but it required political will.

The reality is that there is a callous approach today for what could have been a great initiative that could have made education so interesting. For instance, the entrance doors of the classrooms resembled the protractor and every swing of the door could make the students learn the various angles, helping them with practical examples in geometry. The bottoms of the doors eroded with the constant swing as also the surface where the angles had been painted. There has been a lack of maintenance everywhere. Ashok Kumar says that it was not repainted as the NDMC never told them to. “The school was owned by them we have no right to fiddle with it,” he said.

Even top schools in the capital do not play around with innovative ideas like this. It is a pity that the

idea of Kabir and Preeti has gone to seed.

dev231089@gmail.com