Practising Interdisciplinarity Convergences and Contestations, 2024
This chapter traces the historical trajectory of the discipline of education in India with a spec... more This chapter traces the historical trajectory of the discipline of education in India with a special focus on one of the foundations of education, i.e., psychology. It maps the emergence and shifts in the imagination, discourses, and practices of psychology as a foundation to understand how the contours of education, as a discipline, was being fashioned at various historical junctures in India in interactions with, and influence on global discourses. The chapter uses various annual, quinquennial, commission, and committee report, syllabi and examination papers, research trends to trace and reconstruct the beginnings, continuities, and disjuncture at various points and across several sites. It draws attention to the interlinkages between the child study movement and education both globally and in India. It critically examines the deployment of categories/frameworks of deficit, ‘deprivation’ and developmentalism in the syllabus and researches to construct the ‘child’, to coalesce anxiety around the adjustment of the adolescent and blame/mobilise the family in the projects to achieve and contribute to ‘social control’ and ‘discipline’. The chapter argues that Psychology, with its paraphernalia of concepts and tools to measure and classify the children has brought more harm to education than contribute to removing the conditions that produce and reproduce ‘deficits’.
This paper interrogates cinematic sensibilities of post-colonial Indian cinema to unravel the com... more This paper interrogates cinematic sensibilities of post-colonial Indian cinema to unravel the coming together of child and nation at a crucial historical juncture in making possible an imagination and discourse of the new nation through the imagined child. It shows how through their deployment and interlocking the two tropes – childhood and nation – construct, fashion, and narrate the nation. In particular, it seeks to understand the ways through which ‘childhood’ becomes ‘the primal ground in which national cultures take root’ (Gellner, 1983). In seeking to enunciate the ideological ways through which the nation and child are produced, an ‘affirmative’ imagination in the aesthetics of film comes to the fore. The politics of what is considered worthy, what ideas and which forms of the development of national identification are significant, what is sayable are played out in popular consciousness. The documents for analysis are popular Hindi films produced in the first two and a half decades after independence towards a focus on how the child becomes instrumental in envisaging a new social order. We find that the child-figure in the post-colonial moment is readily abstracted into every project of the yet inchoate nation- the quest for its definition and demarcation, articulation of its inviolable essence, the pathways to its development and the aspirations of an independent identity.
This paper explores school as the site for examining hygiene and cleanliness. The aims of the stu... more This paper explores school as the site for examining hygiene and cleanliness. The aims of the study were to examine aspects of school hygiene, understand children’s needs and to equip primary school children with tools and capacities to develop and sustain body and environmental hygiene through an intervention. Children studying in primary classes from twelve schools run by the local urban municipal body in Delhi participated in the study. 846 and 656 children were interviewed during pre and post intervention phases respectively. Data was collected in the form of observations, interviews and children’s responses on hygiene practices. Data was coded and subjected to statistical analysis. Based on data obtained in the baseline assessment, a Health Hygiene Education Module was designed. The pedagogy was based on discussions, demonstrations, storytelling, activities, interactive games and takeaways. Post intervention, a significant increase in percentage of children who reported followi...
This paper provides a review of pre-service teacher education related policies and reports. It lo... more This paper provides a review of pre-service teacher education related policies and reports. It looks at the core concerns and outlines a brief trajectory of the policies over time. It points to the continuities and departures of the recent policy with earlier recommendations pertaining to enhanced duration TE programmes, limited institutional capacities, strengthening disciplinary knowledge domains and the question of standards. The paper deliberates on the concerns that the National Education Policy 2020 implementation must be attentive to in order to achieve the policy’s articulated and intended goals.
This article looks at how local, as a concept, relates to education in the framework of National ... more This article looks at how local, as a concept, relates to education in the framework of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. To examine this, the paper is divided into five sections. It focusses on the urge for 'local' as an aesthetic. It provides a historical overview of the idea of local in the context of and in relation to education from colonial to contemporary times with attention to various policies, reports and 'innovative' programmes. It highlights how contemporary debates have been influenced by global players and ideologies. The paper explains how local as a leitmotif operates in NEP 2020 and offers suggestions to give space to it in policy implementation.
This commentary navigates the oeuvre of Ariés' writings on childhood, family, private life and de... more This commentary navigates the oeuvre of Ariés' writings on childhood, family, private life and death, with a focus on interrogating 'who is a child?' Departing from the intellectual history prevalent at the time, Ariés deployed the psychogenic approach to study the cultural history of childhood and family. He examines the quotidian experience of aesthetics and other documents of culture to reveal 'what was thought about' viz. the mentalities' of childhood and family spanning a vast canvas from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries. Ariés provocatively proposes that childhood is a modern construct, highlighting that children were not always seen as precious, dependent and in need of adult protection. The magnitude of his intellectual adventure continues to be debated, particularly in childhood studies. The commentary includes an analysis of Ariés' methods and insights about childhood that unsettle the narrow prisms that refract how we see, understand and educate children.
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to understand autonomy of the family in the ‘m... more RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to understand autonomy of the family in the ‘modern’ world by locating the family in the historical changes that led to its present form. The autonomy of the family was shaped in two ways, as collective mentalities and as private space. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The present research problem concerns an important inquiry into the private space of the family and the role of the state in shaping and governing the individual by intervening in the family. The paper uses the method of historical inquiry and analysis of reference literature. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: After having defined the aim of the study and the fundamental concepts (modernity, autonomy, mentalities ) there has been presented the psychogenic history of the family in the context of France. This is followed by the presentation of changes in mentalities and private space in the family, with a special emphasis on the changing focus on the child in the family. T...
Understanding childhood and adolescence in Namita Ranaganathan (Ed.) , 2020
The chapter illustrates how the trajectory of understanding of childhood has been moulded by vari... more The chapter illustrates how the trajectory of understanding of childhood has been moulded by various cultural, social and economic forces and continues to do so. The unique understanding of childhood in India juxtaposes several threads: persistence of ancient folklore and oral history in popular consciousness; the impact of the epic texts as key influences on popular culture; the experience of colonialism; the national freedom struggle; and the more recently witnessed impact of market forces on what constitutes childhood in neoliberal India.
The research discussed in this chapter reveals how varied notions of childhood in India have co-existed over different periods of time. An important leitmotif that emerges from research is the persistence of the ‘child as Krishna’, where the child embodies aspects of the divine. Researches have highlighted that young children are seen as imbued with purity and innocence.
Post-colonial theorists have attempted to draw a homology between childhood and the state of being colonized, where the child is construed as immature, savage and native. Education in the colony, marked by English language and rationalist ideologies served as a unifying thread, bringing colonised subjects across the country closer. Research reveals that children across several regions continue to participate in economically productive work. The clear dissociation of children from the world of work has not unfolded as the state intended it. There are probing questions about what constitutes an ‘ideal’ childhood and should schooling and work be always posed antithetical to each other especially in developing societies. Particularly important are questions about how poverty impacts childhood, the implications of development for childhood, issues of power and hegemony and children’s voice.
This article critically analyses images of children and schooling on the government school gates.... more This article critically analyses images of children and schooling on the government school gates. Underlying assumptions of ‘ideal child’ and ‘childhood’ are laid bare in the quotidian act of moving into and out from the school gates. The examination of these images is complemented with interactions and interviews of teachers and observations in the context of the school, which permits a peep into the inner workings of beliefs and assumptions about children and nature of childhood. The paper uses the ideas of ‘politics of aesthetics’ (Ranciere, 2009) and ‘governmentality’ (Foucault, 1991) to analyse the sensibilities circulating in these images, revealing how naturalization of innocence and technologies of governmentality circulate within the consciousness of the school. The paper argues why is it necessary to open up the aesthetics implicit in the figure of imagined school child to lay bare the cultural politics of childhood and its circulation among the social actors in the context of the government school. How children are seen, understood and imagined in our popular consciousness is closely linked to how we interact, teach and govern them.
In Shivani Nag, Hridyakant Dewan, Manoj Kumar (Ed). The idea, work and identity of teachers [Adhyapan Karm, Adhypak ki chavi va asmita]. New Delhi: Vani Prakshan. Pp 123-144, 2021
This article analyses images of children painted on the government school gates. The images depic... more This article analyses images of children painted on the government school gates. The images depict line drawings of children wearing school uniform entering the school. Assumptions about the 'ideal child' are laid bare in these paintings, revealed in the quotidian act of children moving into the school and out at the end of the school day. Examination of these images and focused interactions with school teachers permits a peep into the inner workings of beliefs about children and the nature of childhood. The child is conceived at the nexus of various spheres of development-family, society and nation. How the image of the school child plays out in each of these spheres is discussed, with a concerted focus on social class. These depictions of well-groomed, fair-skinned girls carrying water bottles to school are incongruous with the reality of children's lives. The paper deploys the concepts of 'politics of aesthetics' (Rancière, 2009) and 'governmentality' (Foucault, 1991) to analyse the sensibilities circulating in these images, revealing ways in which the naturalization of innocence and technologies of governmentality circulate within the consciousness of the school. The necessity of opening up the aesthetics implicit in the figure of school child to open up the cultural politics of childhood and its circulation among the social actors in the context of the government school is discussed. How children are seen, understood and imagined in our popular consciousness is closely linked to how we interact, teach and govern them.
Practising Interdisciplinarity Convergences and Contestations, 2024
This chapter traces the historical trajectory of the discipline of education in India with a spec... more This chapter traces the historical trajectory of the discipline of education in India with a special focus on one of the foundations of education, i.e., psychology. It maps the emergence and shifts in the imagination, discourses, and practices of psychology as a foundation to understand how the contours of education, as a discipline, was being fashioned at various historical junctures in India in interactions with, and influence on global discourses. The chapter uses various annual, quinquennial, commission, and committee report, syllabi and examination papers, research trends to trace and reconstruct the beginnings, continuities, and disjuncture at various points and across several sites. It draws attention to the interlinkages between the child study movement and education both globally and in India. It critically examines the deployment of categories/frameworks of deficit, ‘deprivation’ and developmentalism in the syllabus and researches to construct the ‘child’, to coalesce anxiety around the adjustment of the adolescent and blame/mobilise the family in the projects to achieve and contribute to ‘social control’ and ‘discipline’. The chapter argues that Psychology, with its paraphernalia of concepts and tools to measure and classify the children has brought more harm to education than contribute to removing the conditions that produce and reproduce ‘deficits’.
This paper interrogates cinematic sensibilities of post-colonial Indian cinema to unravel the com... more This paper interrogates cinematic sensibilities of post-colonial Indian cinema to unravel the coming together of child and nation at a crucial historical juncture in making possible an imagination and discourse of the new nation through the imagined child. It shows how through their deployment and interlocking the two tropes – childhood and nation – construct, fashion, and narrate the nation. In particular, it seeks to understand the ways through which ‘childhood’ becomes ‘the primal ground in which national cultures take root’ (Gellner, 1983). In seeking to enunciate the ideological ways through which the nation and child are produced, an ‘affirmative’ imagination in the aesthetics of film comes to the fore. The politics of what is considered worthy, what ideas and which forms of the development of national identification are significant, what is sayable are played out in popular consciousness. The documents for analysis are popular Hindi films produced in the first two and a half decades after independence towards a focus on how the child becomes instrumental in envisaging a new social order. We find that the child-figure in the post-colonial moment is readily abstracted into every project of the yet inchoate nation- the quest for its definition and demarcation, articulation of its inviolable essence, the pathways to its development and the aspirations of an independent identity.
This paper explores school as the site for examining hygiene and cleanliness. The aims of the stu... more This paper explores school as the site for examining hygiene and cleanliness. The aims of the study were to examine aspects of school hygiene, understand children’s needs and to equip primary school children with tools and capacities to develop and sustain body and environmental hygiene through an intervention. Children studying in primary classes from twelve schools run by the local urban municipal body in Delhi participated in the study. 846 and 656 children were interviewed during pre and post intervention phases respectively. Data was collected in the form of observations, interviews and children’s responses on hygiene practices. Data was coded and subjected to statistical analysis. Based on data obtained in the baseline assessment, a Health Hygiene Education Module was designed. The pedagogy was based on discussions, demonstrations, storytelling, activities, interactive games and takeaways. Post intervention, a significant increase in percentage of children who reported followi...
This paper provides a review of pre-service teacher education related policies and reports. It lo... more This paper provides a review of pre-service teacher education related policies and reports. It looks at the core concerns and outlines a brief trajectory of the policies over time. It points to the continuities and departures of the recent policy with earlier recommendations pertaining to enhanced duration TE programmes, limited institutional capacities, strengthening disciplinary knowledge domains and the question of standards. The paper deliberates on the concerns that the National Education Policy 2020 implementation must be attentive to in order to achieve the policy’s articulated and intended goals.
This article looks at how local, as a concept, relates to education in the framework of National ... more This article looks at how local, as a concept, relates to education in the framework of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. To examine this, the paper is divided into five sections. It focusses on the urge for 'local' as an aesthetic. It provides a historical overview of the idea of local in the context of and in relation to education from colonial to contemporary times with attention to various policies, reports and 'innovative' programmes. It highlights how contemporary debates have been influenced by global players and ideologies. The paper explains how local as a leitmotif operates in NEP 2020 and offers suggestions to give space to it in policy implementation.
This commentary navigates the oeuvre of Ariés' writings on childhood, family, private life and de... more This commentary navigates the oeuvre of Ariés' writings on childhood, family, private life and death, with a focus on interrogating 'who is a child?' Departing from the intellectual history prevalent at the time, Ariés deployed the psychogenic approach to study the cultural history of childhood and family. He examines the quotidian experience of aesthetics and other documents of culture to reveal 'what was thought about' viz. the mentalities' of childhood and family spanning a vast canvas from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries. Ariés provocatively proposes that childhood is a modern construct, highlighting that children were not always seen as precious, dependent and in need of adult protection. The magnitude of his intellectual adventure continues to be debated, particularly in childhood studies. The commentary includes an analysis of Ariés' methods and insights about childhood that unsettle the narrow prisms that refract how we see, understand and educate children.
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to understand autonomy of the family in the ‘m... more RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to understand autonomy of the family in the ‘modern’ world by locating the family in the historical changes that led to its present form. The autonomy of the family was shaped in two ways, as collective mentalities and as private space. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The present research problem concerns an important inquiry into the private space of the family and the role of the state in shaping and governing the individual by intervening in the family. The paper uses the method of historical inquiry and analysis of reference literature. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: After having defined the aim of the study and the fundamental concepts (modernity, autonomy, mentalities ) there has been presented the psychogenic history of the family in the context of France. This is followed by the presentation of changes in mentalities and private space in the family, with a special emphasis on the changing focus on the child in the family. T...
Understanding childhood and adolescence in Namita Ranaganathan (Ed.) , 2020
The chapter illustrates how the trajectory of understanding of childhood has been moulded by vari... more The chapter illustrates how the trajectory of understanding of childhood has been moulded by various cultural, social and economic forces and continues to do so. The unique understanding of childhood in India juxtaposes several threads: persistence of ancient folklore and oral history in popular consciousness; the impact of the epic texts as key influences on popular culture; the experience of colonialism; the national freedom struggle; and the more recently witnessed impact of market forces on what constitutes childhood in neoliberal India.
The research discussed in this chapter reveals how varied notions of childhood in India have co-existed over different periods of time. An important leitmotif that emerges from research is the persistence of the ‘child as Krishna’, where the child embodies aspects of the divine. Researches have highlighted that young children are seen as imbued with purity and innocence.
Post-colonial theorists have attempted to draw a homology between childhood and the state of being colonized, where the child is construed as immature, savage and native. Education in the colony, marked by English language and rationalist ideologies served as a unifying thread, bringing colonised subjects across the country closer. Research reveals that children across several regions continue to participate in economically productive work. The clear dissociation of children from the world of work has not unfolded as the state intended it. There are probing questions about what constitutes an ‘ideal’ childhood and should schooling and work be always posed antithetical to each other especially in developing societies. Particularly important are questions about how poverty impacts childhood, the implications of development for childhood, issues of power and hegemony and children’s voice.
This article critically analyses images of children and schooling on the government school gates.... more This article critically analyses images of children and schooling on the government school gates. Underlying assumptions of ‘ideal child’ and ‘childhood’ are laid bare in the quotidian act of moving into and out from the school gates. The examination of these images is complemented with interactions and interviews of teachers and observations in the context of the school, which permits a peep into the inner workings of beliefs and assumptions about children and nature of childhood. The paper uses the ideas of ‘politics of aesthetics’ (Ranciere, 2009) and ‘governmentality’ (Foucault, 1991) to analyse the sensibilities circulating in these images, revealing how naturalization of innocence and technologies of governmentality circulate within the consciousness of the school. The paper argues why is it necessary to open up the aesthetics implicit in the figure of imagined school child to lay bare the cultural politics of childhood and its circulation among the social actors in the context of the government school. How children are seen, understood and imagined in our popular consciousness is closely linked to how we interact, teach and govern them.
In Shivani Nag, Hridyakant Dewan, Manoj Kumar (Ed). The idea, work and identity of teachers [Adhyapan Karm, Adhypak ki chavi va asmita]. New Delhi: Vani Prakshan. Pp 123-144, 2021
This article analyses images of children painted on the government school gates. The images depic... more This article analyses images of children painted on the government school gates. The images depict line drawings of children wearing school uniform entering the school. Assumptions about the 'ideal child' are laid bare in these paintings, revealed in the quotidian act of children moving into the school and out at the end of the school day. Examination of these images and focused interactions with school teachers permits a peep into the inner workings of beliefs about children and the nature of childhood. The child is conceived at the nexus of various spheres of development-family, society and nation. How the image of the school child plays out in each of these spheres is discussed, with a concerted focus on social class. These depictions of well-groomed, fair-skinned girls carrying water bottles to school are incongruous with the reality of children's lives. The paper deploys the concepts of 'politics of aesthetics' (Rancière, 2009) and 'governmentality' (Foucault, 1991) to analyse the sensibilities circulating in these images, revealing ways in which the naturalization of innocence and technologies of governmentality circulate within the consciousness of the school. The necessity of opening up the aesthetics implicit in the figure of school child to open up the cultural politics of childhood and its circulation among the social actors in the context of the government school is discussed. How children are seen, understood and imagined in our popular consciousness is closely linked to how we interact, teach and govern them.
shared benefits and linking education with livelihood, thus contextualizing education within the ... more shared benefits and linking education with livelihood, thus contextualizing education within the political ecology of survival in a rural context. Another very significant aspect of the work is a focus on decentralized autonomy, self-help, and community ownership which are expected to provide sustainability as compared to relatively external interventions that are necessarily short-lived. The holistic approach adopted by DD to the education of adolescents for participatory development is commendable.
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The research discussed in this chapter reveals how varied notions of childhood in India have co-existed over different periods of time. An important leitmotif that emerges from research is the persistence of the ‘child as Krishna’, where the child embodies aspects of the divine. Researches have highlighted that young children are seen as imbued with purity and innocence.
Post-colonial theorists have attempted to draw a homology between childhood and the state of being colonized, where the child is construed as immature, savage and native. Education in the colony, marked by English language and rationalist ideologies served as a unifying thread, bringing colonised subjects across the country closer.
Research reveals that children across several regions continue to participate in economically productive work. The clear dissociation of children from the world of work has not unfolded as the state intended it. There are probing questions about what constitutes an ‘ideal’ childhood and should schooling and work be always posed antithetical to each other especially in developing societies. Particularly important are questions about how poverty impacts childhood, the implications of development for childhood, issues of power and hegemony and children’s voice.
The research discussed in this chapter reveals how varied notions of childhood in India have co-existed over different periods of time. An important leitmotif that emerges from research is the persistence of the ‘child as Krishna’, where the child embodies aspects of the divine. Researches have highlighted that young children are seen as imbued with purity and innocence.
Post-colonial theorists have attempted to draw a homology between childhood and the state of being colonized, where the child is construed as immature, savage and native. Education in the colony, marked by English language and rationalist ideologies served as a unifying thread, bringing colonised subjects across the country closer.
Research reveals that children across several regions continue to participate in economically productive work. The clear dissociation of children from the world of work has not unfolded as the state intended it. There are probing questions about what constitutes an ‘ideal’ childhood and should schooling and work be always posed antithetical to each other especially in developing societies. Particularly important are questions about how poverty impacts childhood, the implications of development for childhood, issues of power and hegemony and children’s voice.