Jyoti Dalal, Ruchira Das
The present paper delves on the relationship that children’s milieu
shares with modern schooling. Understood through the terms like out-of-school
culture or community, milieu stands for children’s lives that are lived outside
the educational spaces and are generally seen as abominable. The paper examines
this prevalent negative sentiment that schools have towards the milieu from
where children come. Instead of finding the reasons within the school, the
paper advocates a philosophical and sociological lens to understand this
sentiment. The work attempts to reflect those
educational experiences of children should not be bereft of children’s
background, as education and life are connected in ways that runs parallel to
the continuity between the school and the community. It is this
school-community linkage that gets articulated in the school-milieu
relationship. One experiences a tension when children’s milieu or them out of
school life enters in the classrooms. Hence it is important to address the
nature of this tension and understand it through the lens of political economy.
In the first part of the paper, the tension of milieu with schooling is traced through
the lens of modernity. The second part of the paper presents the informed
position that NCF 2005 has adopted towards this milieu-school
relationship.
Modernity, Schooling, Milieu, NCF 2005, Child
VOL.14, ISSUE No.1, March 2022