Neelbagh

Neelbagh was a small charitable alternative school for villagers started by David Horsburg in 1972, in a village in southern India.

David Horsburg is considered to be the pioneer of Activity Based Learning in India.

He was more Indian than most Indians. He lived like a complete villager and knew many local languages and taught those to children. Most of these poor village children were quite fluent in five languages – Telugu, Kannada, English, Sanskrit and Hindi.

He used to say, "A teacher is someone who doesn't teach but who sets up suitable learning situations for each individual child, who learns by herself."

To get teachers for his school, he used to write in advertisements: "Needed Teachers, but untrained." He felt that regular teachers were trained in a wrong way and a lot of effort was required to train them in his way of teaching. So, he took untrained teachers and trained them in his own way.

David along with his son Nicholas wrote over a 100 school books published by the Oxford University Press and Orient Longman. The school expenses largely came from the royalties accrued from these books.

An excellent Document that gives details of the School