Indian Child And Childhood: From The Eyes Of The Teacher
...part of the global debate on childhood and a radical ‘child-centered pedagogy’ has been presented to educators by NCF 2005. This qualitative study explores an indigenous, teachers’ discourse on children in India, in terms of firstly, developmental beliefs and related trait(s) and secondly, using Mayall’s Sociology of Childhood, childhood’s perception as a social group. Qualitative analysis of data obtained using clinical interviews and story-narratives revealed that, in terms of a developmental understanding, teachers paradoxically saw children as actively constructing knowledge from their environment, while being passively determined through unidirectional socialization and automatic/subconscious observational learning from their environment. As a social group, teachers gave childhood a subordinate status through processes of control, obedience and dependence. An ideology of vulnerability and incompetence was found to mediate and justify this. The study has implications for ongoing process of indigenization of psychology, teacher-thinking research in India and child- rights movement.
Twentieth century we celebrated as the Century of the Child.
In Twenty-first century, Alas! We question: Who is a Child?
What identity, pray, did we give to an invisible Indian Child?
Children are commonly perceived as simple, innocent, to be both indulged and looked after, in short a ‘natural’, uncontested social category but is this all that is to children? The limerick presents another serious question before us: What do we know about the Indian child- her traits, development and social status? India has the largest young population in the world and yet, there isn’t sufficient knowledge about the same. This study searches for some answers within the indigenous discourse of seven school teachers in Lucknow. Its purpose is basically to generate understanding of one of...
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