Beyond the Classroom: A Case Study on the Relationship Between Education as a Public Good, Social Justice and Critical Pedagogy

Abstract

The idea of education being a transformative force is central to the discourse of education. But with the evolution of societies at a rapid pace, the idea of education being a ‘public good’ stands challenged and needs to be further analysed in relation to contemporary societies. This article argues that the understanding of public goods stemming from the discipline of economics is inadequate to define the needs of the contemporary education systems. The article highlights that the idea/element of ‘social justice’ is central to understand the concept of education as a ‘public good’, and even though Indian policies on education have an element of social justice, the practice of it needs reimagining. Building on evidence from the ‘Bihar Mentorship Project’, which was an action research project at the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies, Bengaluru, the article establishes that ‘critical pedagogy’ can become a vital tool to actualise the idea of social justice in education systems and, hence, is at the core of imagining education as a ‘public good’.