Education

The introduction of skilling programmes in government schools from the secondary level itself--as part of the Indian government's ambition to make India the "Skill Capital of the World"--will restrict young people, largely from socially underprivileged backgrounds, to low-productivity blue-collar employment in the informal sector. What is needed is not truncated education in the form of vocational training, but quality basic education for all, which will enable young people to compete for employment in the formal economy.

Behind the opulence of institutions and the grandstanding of politicians towards teachers lies the real truth—they are among the most undervalued professionals in India. 

This paper analyses the findings of a research project undertaken by the School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University on questions of marriage and related issues in the context of paid domestic work among the working women from two squatter colonies in Kolkata. The respondents are seen to be caught between the imperatives of early marriage and girlhood employment, but they insist upon the value of education for their daughters. Many of them have experienced and suffered early marriage and childbirth and are vehement in their rejection of such a trajectory for their daughters, even though not all of them are able to carry through such decisions. Parents from urban working-class neighbourhoods are not obsessed with sexual chastity of their daughters; they accept courtships and elopements, sometimes hailing the latter with some relief. What these mothers share with their middle class counterparts is an interest in tremendous investment in their children's education, which is in both cases accompanied by great expectations for the future.

This paper compares human capital theory with the capability approach and lays out the problems with the theory. As a knowledge paradigm for education and development, it finds the theory wanting. However, it has remained the foundation for sectoral work in education and health by international financial institutions. The paper spells out the problems, historically, with World Bank lending in the education sector, some of which follow from human capital theory, while others follow from a broader neoliberal agenda. It concludes by delineating the foundational elements of an alternative knowledge paradigm for ?education for all?, based on the capability approach and its extension.

This article discusses the nature of the difficulty in learning and teaching elementary mathematics from the viewpoint of the psychology of learning, focusing on some key topics such as number operation and algebra and how children learn these concepts. The paper also seeks to examine the reasons why many topics in school mathematics seem difficult and to make the point that what is difficult can still be taught and learnt. What is required is often the coordination of a culturally developed sign system with an intuitive base. This coordination is a process that happens naturally and spontaneously if children are given opportunities and situations they find motivating.