ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the effects of social class or stratification upon education. The Hindu caste society is interesting to us for a variety of reasons and, today, the merely academic and comparative one is perhaps the least important. The Hindu caste system is a closed one - it is a stratification fixed for all individuals by the nature of their birth. Wherever societies have existed in the past there has also existed some form of hierarchy or stratification among their members. Caste, broadly speaking, represents a social class system in which membership is determined at, and by, birth, and from which there is little vertical mobility. The existing social stratification inevitably presents a variety of conditions which, prior to the beginning of the period of compulsory schooling, to a large extent determine the child's perceptive ability, his character and personality, and his relationships.
