The talk is based on the edited book by Janaki Nair titled Un/​Common Schooling: Educational Experiments in Twentieth-Century India.

About the Book

Educational practices in India have been curiously deficient in providing alternatives to the inherited colonial system of education. Those offered by Gandhi and Tagore, the two best-known exceptions, were ignored after 1947. 

Un/​Common Schooling (published by Orient BlackSwan) is a collection of writings by idealistic and enterprising individuals who founded alternative schools in India, located mostly in remote villages with little or no access to basic civic amenities, from the 1970s to the present that highlights the philosophies and rationale behind such schools.

The book will serve as an invaluable resource for researchers and practitioners in the fields of education, development studies, and public policy, while also serving as an important archive of a crucial moment in Indian education.

About the Speakers

Janaki Nair is a retired professor, the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

Jane Sahi is the founder of Sita School and a former faculty member, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and Azim Premji University.

K N Sunandan is a faculty member at Azim Premji University.

Amman Madan is a faculty member at Azim Premji University.