Experiments in Critical Pedagogy - The Case of Netritva Vicharshala

The expanding areas and arenas of work of the organisation rests squarely on the shoulders of the many thousands of community-based activists and leaders we have the proud privilege of working with. [...] The hierarchisation of STEM over arts and humanities is evident in the skewed division of resources in favour of the latter1; this is symptomatic of the transmogrification of universities as domains for the enhancement of human capital. [...] Rabindranath Tagore was a vehement critic of the classical university imagination that was limited to the cultivation of the intellectual and the cognitive self, foreclosed from the praxis of being-in-the-world, distinguished from the culture of the masses. [...] In Tagore, Dewey, and the Imminent Demise of Liberal Education (2009), Martha Nussbaum cautions us of the crisis in education ushered in by the dominance of the ‘profit-motive’ in the field of education and the larger cultural sphere. [...] She draws upon the works of John Dewey and Rabindranath Tagore to argue for an education for democratic citizenship, and asserts the importance of the humanities and the arts for the cultivation of a sympathetic and critical public culture.