Critique of the development of teacher education in Bengal

Teacher education in modern period in modern sense was characterized by the colonizers in India. Different committees were instituted to look into the system of teacher education and training. Amongst them Wood's Dispatch, Government of India's Resolution on Education Policy of 1904 and Saddler and Hartog Committees made substantive recommendations which hold good for the present times too. Teacher education includes teaching skills, sound pedagogical theory and professional skills. Hence, now Teacher Education is equal to Teaching Skills + Pedagogical theory + Professional skills. Though the culmination of teacher training into teacher education is an event which dates back to 1964, in the present study, both teacher training and teacher education have been used interchangeably to express the same meaning. The present study would describe why and when teacher training had been established as a system of education in India. It would identify the forces that shaped and developed teacher training in un-divided Colonial Bengal. It would find and locate the premier institutions and their role in that historical context. The term Bengal, wherever used in the present study to delineate the scenario before partition (1947), has been used to indicate undivided Bengal which included parts of Assam, Bihar and Orissa including the present West Bengal and Bangladesh.