ABSTRACT
In India, one of the policy responses to the perceived gap in the case of children of tribal or socially underprivileged communities1, is derived from the concept of ‘educability’. It interprets difference as disadvantage, and the ‘gap’ is to be bridged by minimising the influence of the home through structures such as residential schools for these children. In several states, the tribal welfare department runs residential schools called ashram shalas. The converse approach, of making the school closer to the child’s world, has also been explored in some initiatives, particularly by non-government organisations (NGOs). The suggestion to include ‘traditional games, jokes, riddles, tales, songs and dances in the curriculum of the school to make the child feel at home’ (Nanda, 1989, p. 11) arises from this second way of ‘bridging the gap’. But in either case, this group of words, ‘gap’, ‘polarity’, etc., is metaphorical. Apart from communicating a value judgement, they do not indicate what constitutes the difference. For this we need conceptual tools that will enable us to understand the composition of the curriculum in terms of whose knowledge is selected for inclusion and how it is represented, or its consequences for learners using concepts such as Bernstein’s ‘linguistic codes’ and ‘framing’ (Bernstein, 1977), or Bourdieu’s habitus (1977) (see for example, Kumar, 1989; Kundu, 1994; Singh, 1995).
