Contemporary Education Dialogue

Criticality is the ability to question current theories and practices in any sector to make them more receptive to social realities. Empathy is the ability to identify with what someone else is thinking or feeling. Empathy forms the foundation for welfare state and its liberal social welfare programmes. The state-led development strategies during the post-war period stemmed from a belief in the idea of welfare state and in the redistribution of resources and opportunities in favour of the deprived groups. The market-led globalisation process has put brakes on the scope of welfare provisions even in democratic societies. The public-funded stimulus packages during the recent economic crisis helped save economies from market failure and reinforced the need for state intervention even for an efficient functioning of markets. Based on an analysis of global trends and Indian context, this paper argues for the need of the educational processes to develop criticality in thinking and empathy in action to help develop a support base for public policies benefiting the poor and the disadvantaged.

Geometrical concepts play a crucial role in developing spatial thinking and reasoning. Further, curricular materials play a key role in shaping student-learning experiences in the classroom. The organisation of the content of textbooks plays a decisive role in how and when students are introduced to concepts, especially given the ‘textbook-centric’ teaching practices observed in the Indian classroom. I thus analysed the geometry curriculum from grades one through eight through the lens of the five-level hierarchical van Hiele model of geometrical thinking.1 I organized the analysis to highlight conceptual details at two levels—across a chapter in a particular grade level and across chapters in all the eight grade levels. The analysis has illuminated the affordances of curricular materials to constantly connect students to multiple levels of geometric reasoning, but at the same time it points to the need for reorganizing the curriculum to enable students to systematically progress from visual-based to deduction-based reasoning. The analysis also calls for redesigning certain conceptual representations to promote relational geometrical understanding among students.

The ‘liberal’ feminist perspective on science problematises the presence of fewer women than men in science and believes that increasing their number would qualify as social change. On the other hand, ‘radical’ critics of modern science argue that science has been deeply involved in the creation, strengthening and subversion of gender inequalities. The liberal strand is much more amenable to direct interventions and aligns well with current educational reforms. But the fundamental questions about science and science education that are raised by the radical strand not just evade agreement, but they also do not lead easily to direct educational implications. In this article, I show that an engagement with these perspectives offers us a chance to reflect on our society, on the place of science in it, and on the role of science education in mediating between science and society. This reflection further encourages us to rethink and reorganise science and science education so that they are more mindful of the gender and other kinds of power dynamics in our society.

Ragging has claimed hundreds of innocent lives and has ruined the careers of thousands of students. A total of 717 cases of ragging were reported in the English print media alone across the country from January 2007 to September 2013. However, the media reports tend to focus on extreme cases and do not reveal the true extent of ragging. Moreover, in the absence of empirical data, it is difficult to understand the processes involved in, and the ramifications of, ragging. This study examines the prevalence and types of ragging practices in educational institutions. The study covered 10,632 students from 37 educational institutions spread across 12 states in India. Findings show that almost 40 per cent students admitted to having experienced some kind of ragging. College-wise analysis of the results showed marked variations in the prevalence of ragging among colleges, thus pointing to the role of institutional factors in the occurrence of ragging. Variations in responses are also seen based on the kind of course pursued, gender, and place of residence of student, thus indicating that these are critical factors in influencing the prevalence, severity and kinds of ragging practices.

Citizenship education being central to the process of nation-building, changing political regimes promote a re-imagination of the ‘ideal’ citizen. A perusal of the successive national curriculum frameworks introduced by the NCERT (1975–2005) shows how curricula and textbooks have been repeatedly re-designed to suit the requirements of changing political regimes, throwing up contesting visions of citizenship and nationhood. While this explains the seemingly inevitable state-curricular linkage, the announcement made by the current political dispensation regarding an urgent need for drastic reduction of the curricular load at the school level raises serious concerns. It is widely speculated that the current ruling dispensation supported by its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is going to introduce curricular reforms aimed at reshaping the national identity in accordance with its ideological framework. As during the previous NDA regime (1998–2004), this would not only severely damage the multicultural narrative of India’s past and present, but would also pose a serious challenge to the very idea of India.