ABSTRACT
This book highlights the significance of an interdisciplinary approach to understanding children and childhoods in the Indian context. While it is recognised that multiple kinds of childhoods exist in India, policy and practice approaches to working with children are still based on a singular model of the ideal child rooted in certain Western traditions. The book challenges readers to go beyond the acknowledgement of differences to evolving alternate models to this conception of children and childhoods.
Bringing together well-known scholars from history, politics, sociology, child development, paediatrics and education, the volume represents four major themes: the history and politics of childhoods; deconstructing childhoods by analysing their representations in art, mythology and culture in India; selected facets of childhoods as constructed through education and schooling; and understanding issues related to law, policy and practice, as they pertain to children and childhoods. This important book will be useful to scholars and researchers of education, especially those working in the domains of child development, sociology of education, educational psychology, public policy and South Asian studies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|64 pages
History and politics of childhood
chapter 1|21 pages
Colonial modernity and the ‘child figure’
part II|118 pages
Sociocultural perspectives
chapter 4|22 pages
Childhood, culture and the social sciences
part III|94 pages
Education and schooling
chapter 9|24 pages
Construction of children in Indian educational curricular and policy documents (1964–2005)
chapter 11|23 pages
Childhood as ‘risky’ and life as ‘skills’
part IV|121 pages
Law, practice and policy