This book presents a comparative ethnographic understanding of government and low-fee private schools in India within the context of ever-increasing privatization and commercialization of education and the growing presence of non-state actors. Drawing on rich empirical data, the book provides an ethnographic account of a government and a low-fee private school in Hyderabad, India, and explores life in these two distinct spaces through the lens of culture. While private schools catering to the poorer sections have been proliferating, little is known about how these low-fee private schools operate, how choices and negotiations unfold, the classroom discourses, subjective meanings of different stakeholders, and the kind of education provided in these schools vis-à-vis the government schools. The book focuses on the educational experiences, schooling choices, processes, and voices of the children and teachers at these schools to reflect on how school culture influences the quality of education. Based on intensive fieldwork and qualitative data, the book provides contextual insights into what exactly happens inside the schools and classrooms of two contrasting schooling provisions in India and helps understand the world views of different stakeholders as they negotiate their daily lives. The book will be of interest to students, researchers, and teachers of education, sociology of education, childhood studies, urban education, and teacher education. It will also be useful for education policymakers, educationists, education professionals, and those working on private schooling in India.

This book presents a comparative ethnographic understanding of government and low-fee private schools in India within the context of ever-increasing privatization and commercialization of education and growing presence of non-state actors. Drawing on rich empirical data, the book provides an ethnographic account of a government and a low-fee private school in Hyderabad, India and explores life in these two distinct spaces through the lens of culture. While private schools catering to the poorer sections have been proliferating, little is known about how these low-fee private schools operate, how choices and negotiations unfold, the classroom discourses, subjective meanings of different stakeholders and the kind of education provided in these schools vis-à-vis the government schools. The book focuses on the educational experiences, schooling choices, processes, and voices of the children and teachers at these schools to reflect on how school culture influences the quality of education. Based on intensive fieldwork and qualitative data, the book provides contextual insights of what exactly happens inside the schools and classrooms of two contrasting schooling provisions in India and understand the world views of different stakeholders as they negotiate their daily lives. The book will be of interest to students, researchers, and teachers of education, sociology of education, childhood studies, urban education, and teacher education. It will also be useful for education policymakers, educationists, education professionals, and those working on private schooling in India.

TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: THE SCHOOL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS. 4 CHAPTER II: THE SCHOOL AND THE LIFE OF THE CHILD.. 26 CHAPTER III: WASTE IN EDUCATION.. 46 CHAPTER IV: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION.. 67 CHAPTER V: FROEBEL’S EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES. 84 CHAPTER VI: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OCCUPATIONS. 97 CHAPTER VII: THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATTENTION.. 103 CHAPTER VIII: THE AIM OF HISTORY IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION.. 112 ABOUT THE AUTHOR. 120 CHAPTER 1: THE SCHOOL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS We are apt to look at the school from an individualistic standpoint, as something between teacher and pupil, or between teacher and parent. That which interests us most is naturally the progress made by the individual child of our acquaintance, his normal physical development, his advance in ability to read, write, and figure, his growth in the knowledge of geography and history, improvement in manners, habits of promptness, order, and industry—it is from such standards as these that we judge the work of the school. And rightly so. Yet the range of the outlook needs to be enlarged. What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy. All that society has accomplished for itself is put, through the agency of the school, at the disposal of its future members. All its better thoughts of itself it hopes to realize through the new possibilities thus opened to its future self. Here individualism and socialism are at one. Only by being true to the full growth of all the individuals who make it up, can society by any chance be true to itself. And in the self-direction thus given, nothing counts as much as the school, for, as Horace Mann said, “Where anything is growing, one former is worth a thousand re-formers.” Whenever we have in mind the discussion of a new movement in education, it is especially necessary to take the broader, or social, view. Otherwise, changes in the school institution and tradition will be looked at as the arbitrary inventions of particular teachers; at the worst transitory fads, and at the best merely improvements in certain details—and this is the plane upon which it is too customary to consider school changes. It is as rational to conceive of the locomotive or the telegraph as personal devices. The modification going on in the method and curriculum of education is as much a product of the changed social situation, and as much an effort to meet the needs of the new society that is forming, as are changes in modes of industry and commerce.

`I waited with great anticipation to receive Jon Prosser′s book, School Culture. The wait was worth it and I wasn′t to be disappointed... This is a fine book bringing to a reader a credible and solid set of work′ - Youth and Policy `The most helpful book on genuine school improvement that I have ever read′ - LDR National College for School Leadership `Jon Prosser has put together an eclectic volume. School Culture is not isolated from out of school forces, most of the authors argue Jon Prosser and Terry Warbuton′s piece analyzing the visual representation of schools and teaching shows this in a looking-glass manner. The different chapters challenge us to think again about what we mean by ethos and atmosphere. What the volume demonstrates is just how difficult and challenging it is to define what constitutes a school′s culture′ - Journal of Education for Teaching School culture is today one of the most important themes in education and educational research. This book draws on a wide range of contemporary perspectives to provide an insight into the key issues and concepts which underpin school culture. The first part of the book is concerned with culture as an holistic concept. The second part adopts the stance that school culture is the sum of its subcultures.The contributors focus on significant groups such as teachers and students, or theme, for example sexuality, and examine in depth the nature and character of schooling.

Winner of the 1998 American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Titles Focusing on the cultural history of the origins of outcome-based education (OBE), this book investigates the social and economic culture of Johnson City, New York, schools. OBE has often been proclaimed the salvation for ailing American schools and has spread to thousands of school districts throughout the United States. The reform has also been the lightning rod for fierce challenges from community members who oppose OBE's dismantling of the bell-shaped curve and its promotion of secular humanism. The author uncovers the messy business of school change and its deep roots in the values of the local community and economy. Grounding the story historically and theoretically, Desmond analyzes the reshaping of the Johnson City schools from a production mill for blue collar workers to a development center of technologically minded, middle-class, well-educated citizens. She argues that the heart of successful, synergistic school reform lies in the consensus that children have unlimited learning capacity and a long-term moral leadership that is committed to caring, reciprocal relationships of power.

Contrasting Arguments: The Culture War and The Clash in Education is a small study that presents the variable story of the culture wars and the clash in education from the point of view of the principle actors on the two sides