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Through an excellent selection of essays arranged in six thematic sections, this volume provides an overview of the major underlying concepts, processes and practices that explicate education in contemporary India. Most essays are grounded on empirical research and use ethnography in seeking to understand education from the perspective of students, teachers, as well as the institutional and non-institutional settings within which educational practicesoccur.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Publisher's Acknowledgements
- List of Tables, Figure, and Boxes
- List of Abbreviations xvii
- Introduction: Understanding Education-Ideas, Practice, and Outcomes
- Meenakshi Thapan
- I. EDUCATION FOR THE GOOD CITIZEN: VALUES, IDEALS, PRACTICES
- 1. Tagore, Dewey, and the Imminent Demise of Liberal Education
- Martha Nussbaum
- 2. Politics, Experience, and Cognitive Enslavement:
- Gandhi's Hind Swaraj
- Vivek Dhareshwar
- 3. Private Virtue and Public Space: Education in a Fragile World
- Radhika Herzberger
- 4. Schooling, Culture, and Modernity
- Sanjay Srivastava
- II. CIVIC EDUCATION AND THE MAKING OF IDENTITIES
- 5. Old and New Dilemmas in Indian Civic Education
- Amman Madan
- 6. Pedagogy and Citizenship in Contemporary Society
- Meenakshi Thapan
- 7. Formation of Religious Identity in Early Childhood
- Latika Gupta
- III. INSIDE SCHOOLS: CONTEXTS, PROCESSES, PRACTICES
- 8. Disciplining the Saffron Way: Moral Education and the Hindu Rashtra
- Peggy Froerer
- 9. School Culture: Rituals and Ceremonies
- Meenakshi Thapan
- 10. Institutional Context, Classroom Discourse, and Children's Thinking: Pedagogy Re-examined
- Gaysu R. Arvind
- 11. Politicians, Civil Servants, or Professionals?: Teachers' Voices on Their Work and Worth
- Manabi Majumdar
- IV. EDUCATIONAL TEXTS AND THEIR TRANSMISSION
- 12. Text and Values
- Krishna Kumar
- 13. Plotting the Contours of the Modern Nation: A Feminist Reading of Geography Textbooks
- Dipta Bhog, Purwa Bharadwaj, and Disha Mullick
- 14. Using Texts: An Ethnography of the English Classroom
- Shalini Advani
- V. EDUCATION AND FORMS OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY
- 15. The Meaning of the Old School-Tie: Private Schools, Admission Procedures, and Class Segmentation
- Anne Waldrop
- 16. Educational Stratification, Dominant Ideology, and the Reproduction of Disadvantage in India
- Padma Velaskar
- 17. Creating an Enabling Environment
- Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon
- VI. YOUTH, EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES, AND DILEMMAS
- 18. Mortgaging the Future?: Indian Higher Education
- Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta
- 19. Great Expectations: Youth in Contemporary India
- Craig Jeffrey
- 20. Empty Citizenship: Protesting Politics in the Era of Globalization
- Ritty Lukose
- Index
- About the Editor and Contributors
About the author
Meenakshi Thapan is Professor of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.
Summary
Education and Society: Themes, Perspectives, Practices concerns itself with the social issues and contexts that underpin education and learning in India. It begins with a focus on the possibilities opened up by education, whether these concern the individual, society, or the world at large. Through an excellent selection of essays arranged in six thematic sections, this volume provides an overview of the major underlying concepts in the sociology of education, as well as of the processes and practices that explicate education in contemporary India. Most essays are grounded on empirical research and use ethnography in seeking to understand education from the perspective of students, teachers, as well as the institutional and non-institutional settings within which educational practices occur. The rich and panoramic introduction provides a broad canvas to the essays, which are intentionally both an academic work and a pedagogical aid, since education is both an intellectual discipline, and also a profession.
