Introduction: Modernity, Schooling and Childhood in India: Trajectories of Exclusion

TY - JOUR

T1 - Introduction

T2 - Modernity, Schooling and Childhood in India: Trajectories of Exclusion

AU - Balagopalan, Sarada

N1 - Funding Information: The author would like to thank Divya Kannan and Maithreyi R. for inviting me to write this Introduction. Their insightful comments on earlier drafts have helped to greatly strengthen this Introduction. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - This Introduction sets up a binary framing between the ‘marginal child’ and the ‘subaltern student’ to help contextualize this Special Issue’s efforts to frame educational exclusions in India within a longer history of modernity, childhood and the democratization of schooling. Broadly speaking, the ‘marginal child’ refers to discourses that focus on the ‘victimhood’ of particular populations of children while leveraging their hypothetical schooled futures as the ideal solution to their current situation. In contrast, the ‘subaltern student’ embeds a more historicized framing that draws our attention to first-generation students’ cautious hopefulness around formal education as that which coexists with, and is shaped by, their parallel recognition, navigation and experiences of school spaces as sites that devalue their identities as learners. Each figure, one discursive and the other real, aids in disclosing how recent efforts to realize all ‘children’s right to education’ contain distinct techniques of knowledge production, particular understandings of schooling’s spatial and temporal norm, and contrasting ideas around children’s value and futurity, i.e. practices that have significant ethical and political ramifications in shaping contemporary conversations around educational inequities in India.

AB - This Introduction sets up a binary framing between the ‘marginal child’ and the ‘subaltern student’ to help contextualize this Special Issue’s efforts to frame educational exclusions in India within a longer history of modernity, childhood and the democratization of schooling. Broadly speaking, the ‘marginal child’ refers to discourses that focus on the ‘victimhood’ of particular populations of children while leveraging their hypothetical schooled futures as the ideal solution to their current situation. In contrast, the ‘subaltern student’ embeds a more historicized framing that draws our attention to first-generation students’ cautious hopefulness around formal education as that which coexists with, and is shaped by, their parallel recognition, navigation and experiences of school spaces as sites that devalue their identities as learners. Each figure, one discursive and the other real, aids in disclosing how recent efforts to realize all ‘children’s right to education’ contain distinct techniques of knowledge production, particular understandings of schooling’s spatial and temporal norm, and contrasting ideas around children’s value and futurity, i.e. practices that have significant ethical and political ramifications in shaping contemporary conversations around educational inequities in India.

KW - India

KW - Schooling

KW - caste

KW - devaluation

KW - exclusion

KW - inequities

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85131187165

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85131187165#tab=citedBy

U2 - 10.1080/14733285.2022.2073196

DO - 10.1080/14733285.2022.2073196

M3 - Editorial

SN - 1473-3285

VL - 20

SP - 747

EP - 759

JO - Children's Geographies

JF - Children's Geographies

IS - 6

ER -