Learning for life, from life

This chapter traces the development of the current national primary mathematics textbooks (steered by the author, and published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training), and the National Literacy Campaign in the 1990s. Adult numeracy had been taken as social practice, and a programme developed to ensure ‘learning for life, from life’, drawing from the egalitarian vision of Nai Taleem. Over a decade later, the school textbooks attempt to reframe the social imaginaries about mathematics, transforming its hegemonic character as meant only for the ‘talented’ few, through critical engagement about issues of difference, discrimination and dominance, and inspiring true personal narratives of everyday agency.