The Challenge of Democratization: Learning and Teaching History in the 21st Century edited by Kumkum Roy, 2020; New Delhi, pp 230, free e-book, https://www.academia.edu/44456294/Phoenixkrjune.
The recent reduction in the secondary and higher secondary school curriculum by the Central Board of Secondary Education has resulted in relief among most students while drawing criticism from teachers, scholars and academics who see a method into the presumably random deletion of topics to reduce the workload of students. The CBSE clarified that these are one-time changes resultant of the extraordinary situation arising from COVID-19. This article raises the critical question whether removing important conceptual notions as secularism, federalism and citizenship can lead to deletion of these ideas from the political discourse and public memory.
The online classroom, with its emphasis on intangible concepts and symbols, opens up unseen relationships between time, knowledge, culture, and society in determining a student’s identity.
In the context of the pandemic, we evaluate budget 2021–22 and its six-pillar framework. We found lack of clarity as regards allocations under each of the pillars, and hence we undertook to group ministry-wise allocations under each of the pillars. This categorisation was even more liberal than the one that the finance minister herself spelt out. Despite that, we find that the budget fell short of what was required for problems facing the Indian economy.
In low-cost private schools in India, English as a medium of instruction attracts children of poorly educated parents with a low-income background. A primary survey in Delhi and the National Capital Region finds that mediating primary-level education through an unfamiliar language poses language barriers and adversely affects the learning outcome. The agency in using English for communication is limited. The learning deficit is undetected through successive grades in the primary level due to translation- and memorisation-based teaching processes, and focus on textbook-based exercises. The study finds that parents do not get a fair exchange in return for committing their limited resources towards education.
The paper focuses on the history of the first three Bible women, Mary Wesley, Martha Reuben, and Bathsheba, who came from marginalised communities in Rayalaseema, and emerged as new leaders of social change in the context of colonial modernity and Christianity in the region. The emergence of a modern profession of Bible woman for Dalit women in the 1870s was transformative, opening doors of education, learning, and transforming them into local leaders. Bible women played a pivotal role in the history of Dalits, gender, and missions by shaping the life and community of Dalits and spreading Christianity in Rayalaseema.
Released 34 years after the previous policy on education, the National Education Policy, 2020 is framed in a context that is unrecognisable from that of the past policies. This article examines the discursive framework underlying the current policymaking process.
A response to “The Impossibility of ‘Dalit Studies’” by Ankit Kawade (EPW, 23 November 2019) points out that the possibility of living the life of the mind can be realised in Dalit studies itself if experience is posited as the necessary condition for theorisation.
