Democratization of Knowledge: Vernacular Education Planning in the Indian Context

Rajarshi Singh
Additional contact information
Rajarshi Singh: Consultant, ASER Centre, Pratham Education Foundation

Journal of Developing Societies, 2017, vol. 33, issue 1, 126-149

Abstract: This article explores the challenges of elementary education in India in view of its linguistic-cultural heterogeneity. The historical context leading to mother tongue as the ideal medium of instruction is presented, followed by a discussion on why a large number of mother tongues still remain outside the school system creating problems for the “No Child Left Behind†policy. The paradox faced by a heterogenous country that also needs language standardization or homogenization is raised to highlight the mismatch between school and home languages. Sapir-Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis and Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy framework are discussed to outline a model of present and alternate education pathways of Universal Primary Education.

Keywords: cultural heterogeneity; mother tongue; linguistic relativity; problematization; educational pathways (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0169796X17694519 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jodeso:v:33:y:2017:i:1:p:126-149

DOI: 10.1177/0169796X17694519

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Developing Societies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().