Schooling the National Imagination: Education, English, and the Indian Modern

179 Pages·2009·1.91 MB·English

by  Shalini Advani

Title Pages - Oxford Scholarship
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Schooling the National Imagination: Education, English, and the
Indian Modern
Shalini Advani
Print publication date: 2009
Print ISBN-13: 9780198062752
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198062752.001.0001
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Title Pages
(p.i) SCHOOLING the National Imagination (p.ii)
(p.iii) SCHOOLING the National Imagination
(p.iv)
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(p.vii) Preface
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Schooling the National Imagination: Education, English, and the
Indian Modern
Shalini Advani
Print publication date: 2009
Print ISBN-13: 9780198062752
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198062752.001.0001
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To what extent is it possible to explore a historical trajectory of national identity
through education debates and textbooks? If we examine curriculum, policies, and
planning, can we get a sense of the shifts in the ways in which the imagined community
of a postcolonial nation is fashioned—and then continues to fashion itself as it redefines
its conception of modernity? More specifically, what are the shifts and transformations
in the debates on the issue of the colonial language, English, in a world where that
language gradually morphs into the dominant world language? Along with the
establishment of what has been called World English, an examination of the struggle for
language and identity in India takes us into a terrain that transcends categories of the
national in specific ways. My work began with an exploration of the making of the
national imagination. What emerged, in fact, was the recognition that the exploration of
language is not only about the constitution of the national, but also equally of the
modern.
The genesis of this book came from my years as a classroom teacher and my questions
about how we decide to teach what we do. In exploring answers it quickly became
necessary to move from classroom to policy, from textbook content to the circumstances
which shape it.
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There are a number of individuals without whom this work would not have been
possible. My thanks to Karuna Chanana for her help (p.viii) in nurturing this work in its
early stages. I owe an indefinable debt to Krishna Kumar for his generic wisdom,
inspiration, and comments which helped me re-align many ideas.
Thanks are due to many friends who provided the liquid refreshment, solid support,
and a cornucopia of ideas which made me think and learn. To Ania Loomba for
sparkling ideas and driving adventures, Sunita Thakur for searching reflection, and
both for being family without borders. To Tani and Rajeev Bhargava for providing a
second home in difficult and good times, Anshoo Bajaj, Mukul Mangalik, Pankaj
Butalia, Nilofer Kaul, Rana and Ben Behal, Chitra Joshi, Prabhu Mahapatra, Suvrita
Khatri, Mukul Kesavan, and Arun Das for stimulus and support. To Suvir Kaul for
careful reading, scathing commentary, and the pride he takes in being my most
ungracious friend. To Arun Kapur for reminding me that education is always about
individual people. To Maya Norula, Sabreena Talwar, Kusum Kohli, and Kaadambari
Muttoo for extraordinary friendships and a shared passion for schools. To my family for
being supportive and caring beyond reasonable expectation: Du, Papa for being
fairytale parents, Alika, Div, BK, Kim, Devin, Darsh for love dished out by the bucketful.
To Neel for being the Intel Inside of all my endeavours and Isha for quiet
understanding. To Keya, source of comfort, commonsense, and cuddles, and who like
the boy in A.A. Milne's poem ‘took great care of [her] mother though [she] was only
three’.
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(p.ix) Abbreviations
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Schooling the National Imagination: Education, English, and the
Indian Modern
Shalini Advani
Print publication date: 2009
Print ISBN-13: 9780198062752
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198062752.001.0001
Find in Worldcat
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AIIMS
All India Institute of Medical Sciences
BER
Basic English Reader: UP English textbook
BJP
Bharatiya Janata Party
CBSE
Central Board of Secondary Education
CPI(M)
Communist Party of India (Marxist)
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DMK
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
ER
English Reader, NCERT
GS
General Series: NCERT English textbook series of the 1960s
HSER
High School English Reader: UP English textbook
HSSR
High School Supplementary Reader: UP English textbook
IAS
Indian Administrative Services
ICS
Indian Civil Services
ICW
India and the Contemporay World: NCERT History textbook for Class IX
KER
Kerala English Reader
KSR
Kerala Supplementary Reader
LLE
Let's Learn English: NCERT English textbook series of the 1960s
MCB
Main Coursebook—part of the CBSE Interact in English series
(p.x) MNS
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena
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NCERT
National Council of Educational Research and Training
NCF
National Curriculam Framework
NGO
Non-governmental Organization
NPE
National Policy on Education
RFP
Read for Pleasure: NCERT English textbook series from 1980–2005
SCERT
State Council of Educational Research and Training
SN
Shiksha Nideshalaya: UP English textbook from the 1980s
SS
Special Series: NCERT English textbook series of the 1960s
TQE
Total Quality Education
UP
Uttar Pradesh
WB
Workbook
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Introduction - Oxford Scholarship
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Schooling the National Imagination: Education, English, and the
Indian Modern
Shalini Advani
Print publication date: 2009
Print ISBN-13: 9780198062752
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198062752.001.0001
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Introduction
SHALINI ADVANI
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198062752.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords
The introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to examine English
studies in the school curriculum in India, and use this as a lens to explore the shifts in
the construction of nationalism, modernity, and identity in independent India. The first
section of the book deals with the national educational policy in general and the English
language policy in particular, tracing through them the development of a specific
ideology of postcoloniality in India. The second section examines State-produced school
textbooks, identifying the ways in which the English curriculum both reflects and
constructs identity in particular ways, and examining in the process the differences
between contemporary textbooks and the early State-produced books of the late 1960s
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and early 1970s. The third and final section enters the black box of classroom practice
in schools which use these textbooks to consider the ways in which ideology shapes
pedagogic practice.
Keywords: English studies, English curriculum, language policy, national identity,
school textbooks, educational policy, pedagogic practice
The political agenda of education is a complicated and contradictory territory.
Simultaneously inhabiting the corridors of power, the smoky backrooms where deals
are struck, and the public footpaths where the common people tread, it encompasses
ideology, aspiration, and struggle. To understand this contested terrain is to understand
a nation's identity, politics, and the imagined community of a society.
This work examines English studies in the school curriculum in India, and uses this as a
lens to explore the shifts in the construction of nationalism, modernity, and identity in
independent India. Because of the millions of students it shapes within the school
system, the question of language at the school level—particularly the shift from the
language of the colonizer to its absorption as an Indian language—is critical to the
postcolonial predicament, both in its early stages and as it evolves in response to the
reach of global modernity. What is the role of the school education system in the
cultural formation of the self, especially within the fluid and contestatory boundaries of
linguistic identity? What is the nature of the textbooks produced by a postcolonial
society and how do they construct the national citizen? To what extent do these
textbooks change as the identity of this society changes?
In answering these questions it is possible to trace a specific trajectory of the language
education debate: in its early years we can (p.2) discern how a newly independent
nation defines its nationalism in opposition to its cultural legacy of imperialism. It
celebrates unity and coherence and is uncomfortable with a culture which is local or
fragmentary. How this ideal is refashioned and transformed over the next half century
echoes a larger process of social, economic, and cultural change within society. In
examining the ways in which the imagined community of the nation is fashioned, it is
possible to consider the shifting preoccupations of national identity as these are made
visible through the policies and practices of English education.
Combined with tracing the relationship between the English language and the national,
is a larger story of the relationship of all Indian languages and their relationship with
the national modern. At the time of Independence, the idea of modernity seemed, for
the time being at least, associated with English. In the years after independence,
decolonization provided the frame within which issues of identity, aspirations, and
politics were being thought about, and the issue of language was linked with this. The
questions and debates around language were implicitly framed around whether it was
possible to construct through the use of English, a notion of modernity which could be
intrinsically Indian, rather than an inheritance of a colonial legacy. Sixty years later, the
nature of that question has shifted. There is today a widely and casually accepted link
between English and the modern. Simultaneously, there is a conception of a modern
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