ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Krishna KumarSubscribe to Krishna Kumar

Rethinking Higher Education

The Idea of a University: Possibilities and Contestations edited by D V Kumar, London: Routledge India, 2021; pp 200, price not mentioned.

Politics of Knowledge

The parallel coexistence of central and provincial spheres in education has a visible functional role but also a less visible political and an even less visible sociocultural role. Several decisions announced since the beginning of 2022 enable us to observe these disparate and simultaneous roles. Decisions taken in some of the states are quite noticeably related to impending assembly elections.

Development and the Farmer

The consensus against the farmers’ struggle grants them the space to have doubts and apprehensions, but no civic or intellectual agency to seriously question the legitimacy and reliability of the vision of the future embedded in the new laws.

 

A Regressive Syllabus Redesign

The CBSE’s slashing of its curriculum is an example of unconcern with how it affects the quality of learning.

The Making of Girlhood

A significant divergence characterises girls’ socialisation at home and at school, on the one hand, and their intellectual development through education, on the other. Although both home and school are agencies of socialisation, the two do not converge in the case of girls. This article analyses data from several different domains of girls’ lives ranging in ages from five to 18 years.

Vision without Basis

The Draft National Education Policy, 2019 strives to provide a vision, albeit not presenting any statistical basis or taking into account the sociopolitical and historical contexts, the regional or statewise variations and disparities, financial responsibilities, and the gains made by the earlier initiatives.

Dilution of the Right to Education Act

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 is a long way off from becoming a social reality due to the reluctance to enforce many of its provisions. What has suffered the most is the autonomy and dignity of teachers, which form the core of this law’s approach.

Autonomy in Times of Crisis

The recent decision taken by the University Grants Commission to give greater autonomy to the better-rated and better-ranked institutions needs to be viewed in a wider context. The term “autonomy” conveys a value that the higher education system shed a while ago. Its crisis has deepened over several decades. The author argues that any substantial plan to reform higher education in India must engage with its historically inherited social isolation. 

Education and Girlhood

The issue of “girlhood” rather than “girls” is tackled in an attempt to answer the question “What is education?” and the necessity for autonomy in education is considered. The Indian state’s psychological split between a tyrannical need for control and a benevolence towards its citizens is examined, which leads to an explanation of the diffi culty the state faces in engaging with the culture of girlhood. Finally, the hardships that girls experience with regard to education today are outlined.

Studying Childhood in India

A look at the various ideas of childhood that have been dominant in India over the past century or so, and what they mean for parenting, pedagogy and politics in the new century.

Understanding Vyapam

The Vyapam scam of Madhya Pradesh is not the familiar story of exam cheating. It is about the mutation of exam cheating into a service industry facilitated by the State. Understanding it requires a look at the political economy of a hollowed-out system of education. The scam found a congenial climate in the sociopolitical reality of Madhya Pradesh.

Rurality, Modernity, and Education

Unquestioned social scientific knowledge about modernity says that it is urban. For the rural, the only way to modernise is to develop symptoms of the urban. As a universal instrument of modernity, education is under compulsion to encourage the rural to become urban. This article examines the grammar of rural-urban relations and locates a deep anomaly which arises from the essentially "rural" character of pedagogic modernism.

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