Structural Change Or Social Fluidity? Examining Intergenerational Mobility in Education in India

Munich Personal RePEc Archive Structural Change or Social Fluidity? Examining Intergenerational Mobility in Education in India Ray, Jhilam and Majumder, Rajarshi Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Burdwan, Golapbag, Burdwan, West Bengal, India – 713104, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Burdwan, Golapbag, Burdwan, West Bengal , India– 713104 December 2013 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/54516/ MPRA Paper No. 54516, posted 10 May 2019 09:45 UTC Volume XXVIII No. 3 July 2014 © NIEPA National University of Educational Planning and Administration 17-B, Sri Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi 110016 ISSN 0971-3859 © NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATIONAL PLANNING AND ADMINISTRATION, 2014 (Declared by the Government of India under Section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956) Annual Subscription Within` India Outside India (By Airmail) ` Individuals 150 US $ 60 Institutions 350 US $ 85 Annual Subscription commences with January and ends with October every year. NUEPA offers 20% discount on subscription for three years and above Advertiseme`nt Tariff (For one issue) ` Full Page 2000 US $ 100 Half Page 1100 US $ 055 Bank draft may be sent to the Deputy Publication Officer, NUEPA in the name of the National University of Educational Planning and Administration payable at New Delhi. © NIEPA Published by the Registrar, National University of Educational Planning and Administration, 17-B, Sri Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi–110016 and printed by the Publication Unit, NUEPA at M/s. Anil Offset & Packaging, New Delhi–110060. JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL PLANNING AND ADMINISTRATION Vol. XXVIII No. 3 (July 2014) CONTENTS ARTICLES Discursive Change and the Empowerment of Children — A Conceptual– Analysis 213 Anne Hill Age Composition and Literacy Progress in India — An Inter State Analysis 223 Vachaspati Shukla and Udaya S. Mishra Education of Poor in Kerala — Achievements, Aspirations and Orientations 235 Ann George Structural Change or Social Fluidity? — Examining Inter-generational Mobility in 249 Education in India Jhilam Ray and Rajarshi Majumder RESEARCH NOTES/COMMUNICATIONS/COMMENTARY Quality of Elementary Education in Rural Area of India ― Results from Annual 265 Survey Education Report (ASER) 2010 Sangram Panigrahi and Deepak Shah RESEARCH ABSTRACTS Academic Performance of Urdu and English Medium Adolescents in Relation to 281 Intelligence, Adjustment, Socio-Economic Status and Study Habits Mohd. Moshahid A Study of the Effect of Factors Affecting the Quality of Elementary Education in 289 Urban Slums of Varanasi City Jai Singh BOOK REVIEWS (See© overleaf) NIEPA299 BOOK REVIEWS School Leadership in the Caribbean: Perceptions, Practices and Paradigms 299 (Paul Miller (Ed)) N. Mythili Survey of Higher Education (1947-2007) 303 (M.R. Kolhatkar) V.P. Garg Regulating Private Tutoring for Public Good: Policy Options for Supplementary 306 Education in Asia (Mark Bray and Ora Kwo) Jyoti Bawane India’s Rights Revolutions – Has It Worked for the Poor? 310 (S. K. Das) P.C. Sikligar The World Bank and Education: Critiques and Alternatives 311 (Steven J. Klees; Joel Samoff and Nelly P. Stromquist (eds.)) Jandhyala B.G. Tilak © NIEPA Journal of Educational Planning and Administration Volume XXVIII, No. 3, July 2014, pp. 213-222 Discursive Change and the Empowerment of Children — A Conceptual Analysis# * Anne Hill Abstract The paper responds to key terms in the International Seminar on Democratic and Secular Education held in December 2008 concept note that signify notions driving education reform discourse in Kerala. A post-structuralist approach is used to deconstruct the term ‘secular’ and how it constructs identity in a globalising discursive environment. Tensions between notions of hegemony and agency in the language of globalisation, neo-liberalism and democracy are explored. Binary conceptions of reflective versus reflexive adaptation to change, critical versus emotivist argument and functional versus rights-based democracy are proposed. Bernstein’s taxonomy of learners’ rights and conditions for their realisation is presented as a framework for constructing democratic learning environments. Finally, attention is drawn to the affect of aligning education reform with a discourse of rights-based democracy on education practices for agency and empowerment. © NIEPA # Paper delivered at the International Seminar on Democratic and Secular Education, Kerala, December 2008. * Retired from Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 72 Main Road, Greyton 7233, South Africa. E- mail: [email protected] © National University of Educational Planning and Administration, 2014 Discursive Change and the Empowerment of Children Structure of this Paper • • First, I use a post-structuralist approach to deconstruct notions of ‘secular’ in the concept document. • Second, I examine tensions between notions of hegemony and agency in the language of globalisation, neo-liberalism and democracy • Third, I use Bernstein’s taxonomy of learners’ rights and conditions for their realisation as a framework for locating the democratisation of education in practice. Finally, I suggest how the discourse of rights-based democracy may impact on policy Introductionand curriculum design for the empowerment of children. The concept note preceding the International Seminar on Democratic and Secular Education held in December 2008 on Democratic and Secular Education held in December 2008 invited interrogation of key terms in the discourse of education reform in India and other developing countries, for example, South Africa. By opening this discursive space in the context of reform initiatives, the note implicitly acknowledges Cassirer’s (in Korg 1979:7) assertion that: Cognition, language, myth and art; none of them is a mere mirror, simply reflecting the images of inward or outward data; they are not indifferent media, but rather the true sources of light, the prerequisite of vision, and the wellsprings of all formation… …they are the image-worlds whose principles and origin are to be sought in an autonomous creation of the spirit. Through them alone we see what we call ‘reality’, and in them alone we possess it: for the highest objective truth that is accessible to the spirit is ultimately the form of its own activity. The concept note recognises that it is the formative power of discourse that creates ‘reality’. Without examining how discourse constructs us and our relationships, we cannot understand or express what we mean by ‘quality’ or decide what we mean by the problematic term ‘purpose’ in that ubiquitous common-sense criterion: ‘fit for purpose’. The image worlds we create in language and its artefacts shape our purposes, drive the forms of our interactions and legitimate their ideologies in the ‘quality indicators’ they use to ascribe success to the outcomes© of our activities. NIEPA In its reference to ‘spirit’, Cassirer’s assertion reminds us that language and affect are intimately connected in human discourse. As primary education practitioners, we know how powerfully learning is driven by ‘spirit’, or affect, in children. When considering how children are empowered or disempowered by different education discourses, we have to be aware of the constitutive effects the terminologies, that they encounter in their environments, have on their sense of being: the self. The question is then, what forms of activities of the spirit cause us to interact with learning subjects, children, in one way rather than another? What does the way we treat children reveal about the learning identities we construct for them in our own minds? What effects, in the language of our daily interactions, throw up the signifiers, or terms, we love to use to legitimate our power in the discourse? What does the spiritual energy borne in our favourite terminology imply for policy and practice? 214 Anne Hill There are a number of related key terms in the list of objectives that summarise the aspirations expressed in the concept note: secular; democratic; globalisation, humane, inclusive, quality. In this paper, I attempt to explore how they are related and what this meansDeconstructing for a coherent policy‘Secular’ and practice in relation to children’s empowerment. Bernstein (1996) reminds us that a first step in examining the chain of inter-connecting levels of the system that links policy ultimately to classroom practice (the ‘pedagogic device’) is to ‘construct the learner’. This is a process of trying to understand pressures in daily social discourse and how they shape learners’ identities. It is also important to interrogate what kind of pressures our own discourse might have in shaping learners’ identities. The terms used in the concept note signify a number of discursive fields that could ultimately exert pressure on children’s sense of self, which may, in turn, cause them either to feel secure or alienated in a school environment. I have chosen a post-structuralist approach to a conceptual analysis of ‘secular’ for the following reasons: Post-structural analysis focuses on how a signifier,as a term, operates differently in given contexts or fields of signification. The syntactic and lexical relationships in the concept note create a binary or adversarial relationship between the signifier ‘secular’, its sub- signifiers ‘democratic’, ‘humane’ and an undesirable element that is unnamed in conceptual terminology, but present in the energy of these signifiers’ resistance to it. This element is hinted at in references to ‘[a] political formation with different ideological

Load more