Taking a sociological perspective to understand key questions of education, this course situates education in the contingencies of history, politics, culture, economy, and society. Within this larger structural backdrop, the individual and the social interact with each other to produce experiences of schooling in specific patterned ways. Consider the following questions for example: how has mass schooling come to be established as a ​‘normal’ part of modern childhood? Why do some children succeed in school and some fail? In what ways does structural inequalities of caste, class, and gender mediate experiences of schooling? How has emergence of neoliberalism impacted issues of access, quality, and equality in education? What role does education play in the building of national culture and identity? These and various other questions of education are explored in the course through sociological deconstruction of their structural and agential dimensions.