ABSTRACT

In small towns in north India, educational institutions of one kind or another are increasingly visible features, and they are central to the generation of local discourses on progress and modernity. While the content of the curriculum, the messages that are directly and indirectly communicated through textbooks, examinations, teaching styles and so on, are all important, educational institutions are also embodied in buildings that help to shape the urban environment. School campuses are not only major contributors in themselves, but they also help to give meaning to the buildings that surround the schools. These meanings are not, of course, negotiated and reproduced locally in a vacuum. School buildings copy models derived from India and elsewhere; curricula are national or state-wide; managers, teachers and principals (and sometimes pupils) are mobile. Schools also derive their strength, in part, from the possible futures that schools and colleges may provide for their students – futures that may be in other Indian urban centres or further afield.