Abstract
This chapter analyses how primary school pedagogy has been differently conceptualised in policy arenas in India. The pedagogic legacy of colonial education is discussed with relation to early challenges to didactic methods of instruction. The chapter then focuses on the emergence of child-centred discourses in and after the National Policy on Education 1986. It argues that it was during this period that child-centred education was explicitly taken up in state agendas for educational development. Through this discussion, the chapter sheds light on the role of international development agencies and private–public partnerships in education in shaping national policy in India. The assumptions made about teachers and classroom relations by child-centred education policies are analysed, providing a valuable national policy context in which the subsequent analyses of pedagogic reforms are located.
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Notes
- 1.
In 1939, Montessori was invited to India by members of the Theosophical Society. With the outbreak of World War II, she was exiled from Italy and stayed in India until 1947. During this time, Montessori travelled across the country to train teachers in her child-centred methods. The Montessori movement in India saw the establishment of fee-paying private primary and pre-primary institutions accessed by the middle and upper classes.
- 2.
More recently, the Right to Education Act was passed in 2009, legislating education as a fundamental right for children aged between 6 and 14 years.
- 3.
The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) for primary education is calculated by expressing the number of children enrolled in primary schools, regardless of age, as a percentage of the population of official primary school–aged children. The accuracy of this indicator is contested given the age range of children in schools, particularly the early enrolment of children (cf. Annual Status of Education Report 2008).
- 4.
The first National Policy on Education was put forward in 1968 and stated the need for a ‘radical restructure’ of the education system to achieve ‘economic and cultural development’, ‘national integration’ and ‘realising the ideals of a socialistic society’, but it was thin on the details of its approach towards pedagogy (GoI 1968). The second National Policy on Education was approved by Parliament in May 1986, but was revised in 1992; it is thus known as the National Policy on Education 1986 (as modified in 1992). In this chapter, I examine and refer to the revised NPE 1986 document from 1992.
- 5.
Sadgopal (2006) provided a critical analysis of the failure of the NPE 1986 to carry forward policies of a common school system, which were recommended by the Education Commission 1964–1966 and also accepted in the first NPE of 1968. He argued that this push for non-formal education and the selective Navodaya Vidyalayas ‘provided the foundation for institutionalising a range of parallel layers of low quality streams of educational facilities for different social segments’ (Sadgopal 2006:11).
- 6.
Environmental studies cluster disciplines of science and social studies.
- 7.
The Yash Pal Committee was officially called the ‘National Advisory Committee appointed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development’.
- 8.
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (‘the world is our family’) is a Hindu philosophy of local and global peace that has been appropriated by the Hindu nationalist BJP.
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Sriprakash, A. (2012). The Political Project of Child-Centred Education in India. In: Pedagogies for Development. Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2669-7_3
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