The evaluation of students' learning has been the central focus in Indian schools for a very long time. Teachers and school administrators in most schools train students from the very beginning to sit for the examinations conducted at the end of Classes X and XII. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (popularly known as RTE)…

In the new millennium, the Indian education system has experienced a major shift and the issue of the quality of education has taken centre stage in policy discussion fora. Globally, assessment has become an important means of improving the quality of education, both at the systemic level and at the level of individual students. It necessitates…

This article is inspired by Jane Sahi's commentary, "Dialogue as Education: Martin Buber," published under the feature "Classics with Commentary" in the Monsoon 2005 issue of "Contemporary Education Dialogue." I seek to further the discussion of the contributions of Martin Buber to the discourse of education…

In this commentary, the author discusses the critique by Max Weber and his views on bureaucratisation of education. The modern school, said Max Weber (1864-1920) over a hundred years ago, has as its educational ideal the bureaucrat and no longer the cultivated elite of older times. The shift to modernity and to its characteristic institution, the…

The article presents an ethnographic study conducted in a class in a government-run primary school in Delhi. It was found that a chief concern in the school was that of disciplining children. In the observed class, this took the shape of controlling children's bodies and motor movements. It is argued that through disciplining, teachers were…