What is schooling in our contemporary societies? Is it to equip students for functioning in an information culture and to develop skills that would enable them to become productive agents in a fast globalizing world? Or is it to develop the capability to think and analyze? Mapping the complex transitions that mark primary education today in the state of Kerala, South-West India, this book offers fresh insights, both empirical and theoretical.Schooling here implies a set of cultural practices that cannot be reduced to processes of teaching and learning of prescribed texts and topics. With playground and classroom as the axis points that extend beyond their conventional meanings and temporal and spatial properties the book sites schooling as a cultural practice that shapes our everyday lives.
Ratheesh Kumar is Assistant Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi, India. His research interests are in the areas of social anthropology, sociology of education, popular culture and caste in contemporary India.
