Birth of a New School: The Founding of Bangalore International School 1969-1971 (1958 to 1978: Living in East Africa and the Indian Sub-Continent during the Cold War and the Green Revolution)

Bangalore International School was founded in 1969 by a group of parents led by Eloise R. Bennett. She moved to Bangalore in April 1969 with her husband, Fran Bennett, who took a job under a one of the US government agencies, USAID, under contract to the University of Tennessee to improve agricultural practices in South India as part of what we now call the “Green Revolution". When the Bennett's moved to Bangalore in 1969, an American-style school didn’t exist there, and not having one available limited the family's options to putting children in boarding school, enrolling them in a local Indian-curriculum educational institution, teaching them at home, or finding a way to pull a number of families together in a cooperative-style educational unit. Bangalore International School (BIS) was birthed out of that latter choice. This group of parents worked as non-government agency professionals, as educators, as foreign government employees (like us), or as missionaries. To found the school they fought logistics, betrayal, power games, and money issues. Once she got involved, Eloise Bennett was the driving force behind keeping the group together and moving forward. The first year of the institution now called the Bangalore International School was in 1969-1970 and met in a US government warehouse. These letters are transcriptions of original letters written mainly to or by Eloise during the first two years of the school, and during that time the relationship between Eloise and the Chief of Party for the University of Tennessee's USAID contract turned into a power play. He won by getting Fran fired, even at the cost of upsetting the Government of India over the decision. Or did he win? At the same time the Bennett family flourished, Fran's agricultural work flourished, and Bangalore International School was birthed.