Educational Crisis, Critical Pedagogy and Alternative Institutions of Higher Learning in India: Some Visions and possibilities

Journal Title: International Journal of Research in Social Sciences - Year 2017, Vol 7, Issue 8

Abstract

This paper is a search for the crisis of meaning attached to Higher education especially University education in India. It tries to understand the nuances of the complex domain called higher education, its larger aspirations and dialectical relationship with society. When, in a time each and every inch space of life and the larger world is colonialized by neoliberalism, its instrumental rationality and culture of global capitalism and money making, this paper looks at how for example it affected the larger aspirations higher education? How, its instrumental rationality, its epistemic forms and one–dimensional individuation shapes our consciousness, imagination and praxis. How for example, this predominance of onedimensional positivist techno-scientific culture of neoliberalism, colonializes our life world and deprives human being from the deeper questions relating to nature, culture, society, human consciousness and diverse forms of life and reduces human being into a mere consumer and reduces a genuine human right to a privilege.? In this context I invoke the transformative possibilities embedded in critical pedagogic tradition. I also invoked how some of prevalent alternative institutions of higher learning, with its creative possibilities can provide a possibility of an act of resistance, an alternative. In this context I focused on JNU, as an alternative university, its vision and perspectives; its critical and humanist ideals, reach academic culture and deep sensitivity for society, culture and humanity.

Authors and Affiliations

Dhiren Kumar Sahoo

Keywords