Course Type | Course Code | No. Of Credits |
---|---|---|
Foundation Core | SES201103 | 4 |
Semester and Year Offered: Monsoon Semester 2019
Course Coordinator and Team:
MA Education: Rajshree Chanchal (C); Manish Jain
Email of course coordinator: rajshree@aud.ac.in
Pre-requisites: None
Course Objectives:
This course aims to introduce students to the phenomenon of education in India since colonial period through intersecting frames of time, themes and locales. These frames are used to historically situate education in interaction with other social-cultural institutions and processes, experiences/practices of colonialism, modern state, ‘nation-building’, and changes in social power structure at different historical junctures. With reference to time, continuities and changes are traced in the context of pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial frames, practices and institutions of education. Themes of colonialism, nationalism, dominance, marginalisation, identity formation, representation and knowledge are used to explore meaning, roles, purposes, concerns, discourses, availability and experiences of education across different periods, regions, social groups, curriculum, different school subjects and policies. These themes are also used to examine construction, assimilation and disintegration of colonial, national(ist), regional, gendered, caste and classed histories of education in India.
Course Outcomes:
On successful completion of this course students should be able to:
Brief description of modules:
The course is organised in five units.
Unit 1: Writing History of Education in a Modern World: Concepts, Practices and Challenges (2 weeks)
This introductory unit would introduce students to the domain of history of education by engaging with the concept of modern and modernity and understanding education with reference to changes in the social-cultural institutions and processes such as family, child-rearing and the idea of childhood, development of printing and emergence of reading publics and public forums along with changes in economy and expectations of/from state.
Unit 2: Pre-colonial and Colonial systems of Education (3 weeks)
This unit would introduce students to indigenous education in different parts of India in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Then it would examine if education was implicated in the cultural project of colonialism. Key debates, ideas and policies of colonial education, its conceptualization of knowledge and curriculum, and its legacies would be focused on.
Unit 3: Educating the Nation (3 weeks)
This unit tries to understand the interface of education with emergence of the idea and forces of nationalism and formation of nation-states in colonial and postcolonial contexts. It looks at contesting meanings of nation, proposals to use education for ‘national’ purposes and continuities/breaks of ‘national’ education with colonial education and visions. It also examines the role of education in the nation-building project in independent India and its silences.
Unit 4: Dominance, Marginalisation, Identities and Education (3 weeks)
This unit is based on the assumption that we cannot understand the Indian response to colonial education or the colonial reactions to Indian reception if we move through any rigid homogenous typology of colonizer and colonized. Instead, it uses the intersecting vectors of gender, caste, tribal and religious affinity to examine access to education and how was/is education involved in the wider contests to fashion a self-identity and establish and challenge dominance.
Unit 5: Histories of School Subjects (1 week)
Why and when do certain knowledge-discipline(s) enter or are removed from the school curriculum? What do histories of school subjects tell us about the development of a subject over a period of time, changes in its status and changing understanding and approaches to discipline? How are trajectories of and concerns about a school subject influenced by different social forces, national contexts and time periods? This unit would discuss these questions through case studies of some school subjects.
Assessment Details with weights:
Reading List:
Unit 1
Essential Readings:
Unit 2
Essential Readings
Unit 3
Essential Reading
Unit 4 Essential Readings
Unit 5 Essential Readings