Terrestrial Lessons

Terrestrial Lessons
Author: Sumathi Ramaswamy
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 022647674X

Why and how do debates about the form and disposition of our Earth shape enlightened subjectivity and secular worldliness in colonial modernity? Sumathi Ramaswamy explores this question for British India with the aid of the terrestrial globe, which since the sixteenth century has circulated as a worldly symbol, a scientific instrument, and not least an educational tool for inculcating planetary consciousness. In Terrestrial Lessons, Ramaswamy provides the first in-depth analysis of the globe’s history in and impact on the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era and its aftermath. Drawing on a wide array of archival sources, she delineates its transformation from a thing of distinction possessed by elite men into that mass-produced commodity used in classrooms worldwide—the humble school globe. Traversing the length and breadth of British India, Terrestrial Lessons is an unconventional history of this master object of pedagogical modernity that will fascinate historians of cartography, science, and Asian studies.

Teaching in Unequal Societies

Teaching in Unequal Societies
Author: John Russon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2021-12-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9389812674

This book considers teaching in modern institutional settings, among other things, as the ethical questioning and reversal of passively accepted prejudices, particularly in contexts of diversities and inequalities. Its thematic focus is the ethics of teacher-learner and learner-learner relationships within the democratic setup, and the possibilities of critique and transformation emerging out of such a relationship. The first theme of the book is diversity and pluralism, the second is the question of inequality in such contexts of radical diversity. With respect to this question, an unavoidable phenomenon of our times is the capitalisation of education and the reductionist view of learners as customers and consumers of knowledge. The approach to education that sees students merely as skilled human resources to be readied for the job market militates against critical thinking and do not respond appropriately to the questions of diversity and inequality. Thus, a significant focus of the book is the impact of inherited inequalities of caste and race on classroom ambience and teachers' interventions in the modern institutional context. The pertinent question is the increasing unwillingness of teachers to recognise and challenge discriminatory views and play their role in social transformation. In this regard, the teaching and learning of the humanities is also investigated. Teaching and the traditional classroom, it is often said, may not be required in the future as machines and remotely located teachers/explicators might claim their place. Hence, another question of focus is whether such a future would be hospitable to the critical task of education to cultivate young citizens of democracies.