The Durability of Academic Secondary Education in India

Abstract

From 1952 to 1964, the Government of India and the State governments in India initiated several attempts to change the character and structure of academic secondary education. These attempts met with indifferent success. The academic orientation and emphasis of secondary education proved to be quite resilient in the face of reform attempts. This is usually explained in terms of the inadequacies of administering newly initiated reforms, but the position of this paper is that conflict over educational goals and differences of opportunities among the castes and classes are more important. The social class approach sheds new light on many of the educational theories and practices in India and exposes the crucial failure of will in implementing reforms.