Overview
While education has traditionally been viewed as a catalyst of social transformation, there is now a growing awareness that the vertical expansion and spread of education have actually served to increase the economic distance between divergent groups in society. Sympathetic to the latter view, Education, Development, and Underdevelopment, a volume of original essays, examines the extent to which education has led to domination of many by a few, thereby furthering inequalities and underdevelopment.
The contributors explore important facets of the relationship between education, development, and underdevelopment, with a special focus on India. Among the issues discussed are the consequences of colonial policy on education, differential access to and persisting inequalities in education, the paradox of the brain drain, constraints in educating the poor, and the increasing emphasis on privatization in recent times. Field-level accounts of voluntary efforts to impart education to deprived sections of society-such as to quarry workers and to Dalits-are used to illustrate the themes.
By problematizing the issues, the contributors argue for refocusing the goal of education from one that satisfies the needs of the economy to one where education brings about social transformation and extends, rather than distorts, the goals of justice and equality.
Education, Development, and Underdevelopment will be of interest to students and academics in education, sociology, development studies, and policy studies.