Sociology of Education in India: Changing Contours and Emerging Concerns

257 Pages·2013·1.368 MB·English

by  Geetha B. Nambissan, Srinivasa Rao

Title Pages
Sociology of Education in India: Changing
Contours and Emerging Concerns
Geetha B. Nambissan and Srinivasa Rao
Print publication date: 2012
Print ISBN-13: 9780198082866
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2013
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198082866.001.0001
Title Pages
(p.i) Sociology of Education in India (p.ii)
(p.iii) Sociology of Education in India
(p.iv)
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Acknowledgements
Sociology of Education in India: Changing
Contours and Emerging Concerns
Geetha B. Nambissan and Srinivasa Rao
Print publication date: 2012
Print ISBN-13: 9780198082866
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2013
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198082866.001.0001
(p.vii) Acknowledgements
In March 2006, on behalf of the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies
(ZHCES), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, we organized a
conference that brought together sociologists in India who were engaged in the
study of education. We felt the need for a dialogue among scholars to reflect on
sociology of education (SoE) and on the imagination that sociology could bring
to the increasing challenges education was facing in contemporary India. The
conference was of special significance as it was the second time ever that
scholars met to discuss the concerns of SoE in India after the initial inauguration
of the field in December 1964, when Professor M.S. Gore had organized the first
SoE conference in Mumbai. We are grateful to late Professor M.S. Gore for his
greetings to the second SoE conference in India in 2006. Professor Suma
Chitnis, who was part of Professor M.S. Gore’s team in the late 1960s,
participated in the second conference and provided a fascinating glimpse of the
early years of SoE in her keynote address to the participants. We are grateful for
her encouragement and support. A large number of our colleagues at other
universities and research institutions, and younger faculty presented papers and
were part of the three-day deliberations that saw rich discussion, debate, and
critical reflection. We are thankful to all of them. We are also grateful to all the
contributors to this volume for their cooperation and patience and to Oxford
University Press for seeing the book through. JNU and ZHCES provided
institutional and financial support for which we are thankful.
Professor Karuna Chanana is one of the leading scholars of the discipline and a
key architect in building the sociological study of education at ZHCES. She has
also been our teacher and colleague. This book is in her honour. (p.viii)
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Abbreviations
Sociology of Education in India: Changing
Contours and Emerging Concerns
Geetha B. Nambissan and Srinivasa Rao
Print publication date: 2012
Print ISBN-13: 9780198082866
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2013
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198082866.001.0001
(p.ix) Abbreviations
AC
air conditioner
AIIMS
All India Institute of Medical Sciences
AYUSH
Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy
BAMS
Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery
BEd
Bachelor of Education
BElEd
Bachelor of Elementary Education
CCIM
Central Council of Indian Medicine
CET
Common Entrance Test
CWDS
Centre for Women’s Development Studies
DASA
Direct Admission to Students Abroad
DPEP
District Primary Education Programme
HoD
Head of Department
HSTP
Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme
IAS
Indian Administrative Service
Page 1 of 3
Abbreviations
ICSSR
Indian Council of Social Science Research
ICU
intensive-care unit
IIT
Indian Institute of Technology
ILO
International Labour Organization
ISKCON
International Society for Krishna Consciousness
ISM
Indigenous Systems of Medicine
IT
Information Technology
JEE
Joint Entrance Examination
JNU
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Km/s
Kilometre/s
MEd
Master of Education
NCERT
National Council of Educational Research and Training
NCTE
National Council of Teacher Education
NET
National Educational Test
NGO
Non-governmental Organization
NIEPA
National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration
(p.x) NMI
Native Medical Institution
NRHM
National Rural Health Mission
NRI
non-resident Indian
NSoE
New Sociology of Education
OBC
Other Backward Class
PC
Preparatory Course
Page 2 of 3
Abbreviations
PHC
Primary Health Centre
PROBE
Public Report on Basic Education
PWDs
Persons with Disabilities
RUSE
Research Unit in the Sociology of Education
SC
Scheduled Caste
SNDT
Shrimati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey
SoE
Sociology of Education
SoEI
Sociology of Educational Inequality
SSA
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
ST
Scheduled Tribe
TISCO
Tata Iron and Steel Company
TISS
Tata Institute of Social Sciences
UGC
University Grants Commission
UK
United Kingdom
UN
United Nations
UNO
United Nations Organization
US
United States
ZHCES
Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies
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Introduction
Sociology of Education in India: Changing
Contours and Emerging Concerns
Geetha B. Nambissan and Srinivasa Rao
Print publication date: 2012
Print ISBN-13: 9780198082866
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2013
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198082866.001.0001
Introduction
Sociology of Education in India—Trajectory, Location, and Concerns
Geetha B. Nambissan
S. Srinivasa Rao
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198082866.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords
The Introduction discusses the themes covered by the essays in this volume
about the history of the development, the trajectory, location, and contemporary
concerns of the sociology of education (SoE) in India. The essays included are
based on the presentations made at the March 2006 seminar held at the
Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, titled ‘Sociology of Education in India
—Looking Back, Looking Ahead’. The content of SoE courses taught in
universities today are rarely a matter of discussion for scholars, and the work of
internationally known classical thinkers on SoE have been largely ignored. In
this volume, many contributors reflect critically on the work of these scholars in
the context of contemporary concerns in education in India. Some chapters
focus on the need to include courses on SoE in teacher preparation in India
while others attempt to ‘counter neoliberal and intellectually conservative
onslaughts on knowledge generation, which…deflects attention from increasing
inequality in society and education.’ The Introduction outlines the content of the
two sections of the volume. The first deals with disciplinary trajectory of SoE
and analyses its journey and theoretical and methodological concerns. This is
followed by chapters on emerging discourses and contemporary concerns about
SoE in India. The second section brings together contributions that break new
ground in theoretical and empirical engagement with equality, identity, and
exclusions in education.
Page 1 of 21
Introduction
Keywords:   sociology of education, education in India, exclusions in education, theories of education,
methodology of education, teacher preparation in India, Jawaharlal Nehru University
The Context
Education in contemporary India is marked by sharp inequalities, rising
aspirations, and diverse and deeply contested discourses regarding the meaning
and purposes of education, who should deliver it, what should be offered as
content, and what its relationship should be with the nation state and society. In
this sense, the educational arena today in India is vastly different from that in
the first decade of post-independent India, where education was seen as a key
institution for the larger project of nation building and national development and
through which equality of opportunity and social justice could be achieved.
Though the non-state sector, primarily through philanthropic initiatives, had
played a significant role in the spread of education prior to independence, the
overwhelming responsibility of the state, especially in the provision of education
to all children, was unquestioned. Today, most of these tenets stand questioned.
While nation building is still a major theme in Indian textbooks, the canvas of
educational aspirations is now global rather than national for middle-class
Indians and the pathway to these opportunities is the private/public school
rather than those run by the state. Education policy receives far greater
importance today than ever before. It has shifted from broad pronouncements on
education as a harbinger of equal opportunity and social change to specific
policy shifts and interventions that have far-reaching implications.
Despite the massive expansion of the education system, inequalities continue to
be visible at all stages, and even at the elementary level, where non-completion
of primary schooling and low transition rates (p.2) are striking among the
socially and economically disadvantaged sections of society, such as the
Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and socio-religious minorities.
Girls within these groups and children with disability are educationally among
the most vulnerable. A stratified system of education and complex school–home–
society linkages that yielded privilege and disadvantage, were realities in Indian
society prior to the 1990s. However, economic and social forces that have come
with globalization and privatization in the post-1990s have widened old
inequalities, and also created new diversities and inequities that operate and
interface in complex ways within the domain of education, its policies,
institutions, and processes.
The post-1990s reforms initiated in education as part of the larger economic
restructuring in India have led to a number of significant changes: the distinct
spread of marketization and commercialization in education; the withdrawal of
the state; and the decline in state subsidies which is most visible in higher
education. The corporate sector has come in as a key player in school education
and there is increasing stratification of institutions in terms of ‘quality’. Similar
to many anglophile countries, India is also witnessing the spread of neoliberal
ideology and an emphasis on the reign of the market, most notably, in the field of
Page 2 of 21
Introduction
education. We are also seeing the persistence of conservative and communal
values that call into question values that underlie the democratic and plural
character of this society. In the changing socio-economic and political context,
concerns of equity have receded to the background, and institutional diversity
and choice for greater inclusion are emerging as the new catchwords in
educational discourse. The market is increasingly influencing the aims of
education and is being viewed, even among the most marginal sections, as the
major arbitrator of the futures of their children.
The study of education embedded in a society characterized by social and
economic hierarchies and cultural diversity should have been a rich area for
sociological enquiry. However, this has not been the case. The sociology of
education (SoE) as a sub-discipline of sociology has been a latecomer to the
Indian academic arena. The growth of interest in the study of education was
largely propelled by policy concerns since the late 1960s. This was not
accompanied by the creation of adequate institutional space for the development
of SoE. The fallout has been that the building of sociological knowledge critical
to the understanding (p.3) of school–society relationships in India, and
educational processes and institutions is still a task that has to be urgently
addressed. Given the challenge that the study of the complex, contested, and
changing terrain of education sets before the sociologist, it becomes important
to review the state of SoE and the theoretical and methodological resources that
it brings to address contemporary concerns and the possible future paths that it
may need to chart.
This volume is part of an effort to reflect on the intellectual field of SoE. The
contributions are based on presentations at a seminar on ‘Sociology of
Education in India—Looking Back, Looking Ahead’, organized in 2006 at the
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, on 9 and 10 March 2006. In addition to
the Introduction, there are 11 chapters that are divided into two broad sections.
The first section maps the disciplinary trajectory of SoE in India, and chapters in
this section critically analyse its journey, the changing institutional domain, and
theoretical and methodological concerns. This is followed by chapters that dwell
on contemporary concerns and emerging discourses in education. This section
brings together contributions that break new ground in theoretical and
empirical engagement with equality, identity, and exclusions in education. In the
discussion that follows, we trace the emergence and growth of SoE in India.
Drawing upon the contributions of our authors, we also map some of the
concerns around education in India.
Emergence and Growth of SoE in India
It was more than five decades after the discipline of sociology emerged in India
that the first few sociological studies on education were undertaken in the 1950s
and the 1960s. The faint outlines of the sub-discipline can be traced to the late
1960s when sociologists were brought in to contribute to the deliberations of the
Page 3 of 21
Introduction
first Education Commission (1964–6), also known as the Kothari Commission.
The scope of SoE outlined at a seminar in 1964 and the major areas and sub-
areas for research on education in India were mapped (Gore et al. 1967). A
volume entitled, Papers in Sociology of Education in India, was published in
1967, to which leading sociologists of the time contributed. They included M.S.
Gore and I.P. Desai who provided the initial outline of the scope of SoE in India;
S.C. Dube examined the importance of (p.4) education in the transformation
from a traditional to a modern society; A.R. Desai (1959[1979]) reflected on the
colonial context of education; M.S.A. Rao elaborated on the differentiation that
the modern education system introduced in the traditional social structure;
Yogendra Singh dwelt on education and socialization; and Y.B. Damle presented
a detailed analysis of the structural and functional aspects of the school and
college (Gore et al. 1967). Field studies in SoE were carried out in different
states in the 1960s and published in 1970 by National Council of Educational
Research and Training (NCERT) (Gore et al. 1970). M.S Gore, I.P. Desai, Suma
Chitnis, Ramakrishna Mukherjee, and other sociologists were involved in
different stages of the research.
The beginnings of research on education within sociology departments can be
traced to the work of I.P. Desai, in the early 1950s, on the social background of
high school students in Poona and their performance, aspirations, and attitude
(Desai 1953). Desai’s doctoral student, B.V. Shah, studied the role of high school
teachers in 1967, followed by Karuna Ahmad who focused on the social
background of women students in Delhi University for her doctoral research in
1968. Other than these instances, there appears to have been little academic
space at the time for the sociological study of education as a distinct area for
doctoral research.
The slow growth of SoE in the 1950s and the 1960s may be linked to the pace of
the discipline of sociology itself around that time. For instance, though the first
postgraduate department of sociology was established in 1919 at the University
of Bombay, only six universities had departments of sociology in 1950.1 Though
the number of universities offering sociology increased from 6 in 1950 to 19 in
1966 (University Grants Commission [UGC] 1966), only M.S. University, Baroda,
and Osmania University, Hyderabad were offering courses in SoE in the 1960s.
The UGC Review Committee (1966), under the chairpersonship of M.N. Srinivas,
was referring to the state of the sub-disciplines of sociology when it observed
that ‘Even today, the study of some aspects of Indian society is not liked…as
such studies will project a poor image of India to the outside world’ (UGC 1966:
60). The areas referred to included education, social demography, health, and
untouchability. The situation barely improved over the next decade. In 1978, of
the 40 departments of sociology, 13 departments were offering a course on SoE
at the postgraduate level (UGC 1978). Even in the late 1990s, (p.5) only 16 of
53 university departments of sociology (that responded to a questionnaire from
Page 4 of 21