ABSTRACT
The chapter will highlight the role of alternative and critical education which addresses the social class and power disparity in the educational domain. This approach reorients the students into cooperative learning, new meaning-making, and collective participation for greater equality rather than creating ability-based divides. In the Indian context, where students are studying in different categories of schools, government, semi-government, madrassa, alternative schools, and private, it can be argued that social class, choice, and commodification of education have a diversified impact on students and parents, as in the neoliberal times, upper-class schools cater to the need of the student to survive in the future competition as compared with the students from lower classes. Seeing the circumstances of the pandemic, the students of marginalized groups living in slums or scattered in different parts of the country without any resources are very much affected in terms of their education, health, and social exclusion. Thus, the present chapter will also present “a contemporary debate reflecting the conditions of education in the time of Covid-19”.
