1st Edition
Education and the Public Sphere Exploring the Structures of Mediation in Post-Colonial India
Education and the Public Sphere conceptually and empirically investigates and unfolds several complexities embedded in the educational system in India by exploring it as a site of transforming the public sphere. Bringing together a range of contributions from education and the social sciences, this volume analyses and reflects on structures in education and how these mediate and transform the public sphere in post-colonial India.
Drawing on fresh research, case studies and testimony, this book debates issues such as the crisis in higher education, privatisation and politicisation of education, the reciprocal relationship between marginalisation and education, and the lasting impact that modern pedagogical practices have on the wider world. It critically reflects on the direct engagement of people, institutions, various cultural sensibilities and public debate to animate how these combined structures affect the teaching and learning process.
From a unique interdisciplinary perspective, this book initiates an analytical enquiry into teaching and the culture of learning, generating critical discourses on the system as a whole. This book will be vital reading for researchers, scholars and postgraduate students in the field of international education, education theory and social justice education.
Introduction Suresh Babu G.S Part I Crisis, contestation and possibilities in education 1. Towards a destruction of critical thinking Prabhat Patnaik 2. The crisis of India’s Higher Education Zoya Hasan 3. Education as emancipation: reading freedom through Dalit narratives Raj Kumar Part II Mediations in academics: politics, governance and public action 4. Between prohibition of political activity and capture of political space: the predicament of student politics in Kerala Praveena Kodoth 5. Public and private dichotomy: an empirical insight into the university governance in India Chetan Singai 6. Publication or public action? Discursive spaces of disengagements in India L.N. Venkataraman Part III Public-private borderlines: negotiations in education 7. Parental choice for schools in the changing context of the state and market in India Pradeep Kumar Choudhury 8. Privatization and shrinking free space in Indian higher education: challenges for inclusive knowledge society Narender Thakur & Gaurav J. Pathania 9. Public sphere and educational policy transformations in Kerala Ahammedul Kabeer AP Part IV Mobilisation for education: critical voices from the margins 10. Can social movements lead to educational change? Some reflections on case study of the Adivasi Munnetra Sangam Amman Madan, Rama Sastry and B. Ramdas 11. Everyday violence, schooling and mediating institutions in Northeast India Jeebanlata Salam 12. Pedagogic settings and pedagogic deterrence: a treatise on tribal education and social exclusion Babu C. T. Sunil Part V Teaching and learning: everyday engagement in education and research 13. Silent public and speaking selves: locating ‘public sphere’ through classroom practices Pranta Pratik Patnaik 14. Everyday engagement with social issues: prospects of liberal arts and engineering students in the institutions of higher learning Sarvendra Yadav 15. Researcher, field and caste encounter: critical reflections on fieldwork Ajay Choudhary 16. Education, self and society: a contemporary reading of (integrated) ‘Science of the Absolute’ in the philosophy of Narayana Guru and Nataraja Guru Shareena Banu C. P Conclusion: education and the public sphere: conceptions and their mediations Suresh Babu G.S
Biography
Suresh Babu G.S teaches at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Previously, he was working with the Department of Sociology, University of Jammu (2005–2013). His research focuses on the post-colonial debates of subaltern communities in India through the critical lens of education as a tool of cultural politics beyond the normative logic of social mobility. He is trying to situate how the marginalized, the displaced, the migrants and the mountainous communities negotiate with a democratic institution and cultivate new habits and aspirations for (higher) education in the citadel of the knowledge society. He holds a doctorate and a master of philosophy in sociology from JNU and a master’s from the Loyola College of Social Sciences. He has undertaken field-based research in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Kerala on education, development and ecology. Recently, he has taken up a new research project to study the political culture of the university campus in India for ICSSR. His numerous publications include Engaging with Modernity and Development in India, research-based articles, chapters in books and monographs. As a member of the collaborative project under DAAD, he has been visiting scholar at the University of Cologne, Germany, in 2015 and 2017.
