[The Barefoot College is] the only college where the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher.

Bunker Roy (Sanjit “Bunker” Roy), a social activist and founder of the Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan, has often described the institution’s pedagogy as reversing conventional hierarchies of expertise. In talks and interviews about Barefoot College’s work—training rural and often non-literate villagers (including grandmothers) as solar engineers, teachers, health workers, and artisans—Roy emphasizes that practical knowledge and lived experience are treated as primary credentials. The remark is typically used to explain Barefoot’s community-based, peer-to-peer model, where outside “experts” are de-centered and local people teach one another through demonstration, repetition, and shared problem-solving.

The quote frames Barefoot College as an inversion of the standard educational model: authority does not flow one-way from credentialed instructor to passive student. Instead, teaching and learning are reciprocal, grounded in practice and community needs. Roy’s formulation argues that knowledge is not monopolized by formal schooling; it is produced and validated through doing—repairing, building, organizing, and adapting technologies to local conditions. The line also functions as a critique of development programs that import solutions and expertise, suggesting that sustainable change depends on empowering communities to become both the holders and transmitters of skill.