Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

210 B. LAKSHMI
technology. Assuming the significance of education in social transformation
and socialisation, that is, the training of the young, this chapter
examines the gender dimensions of education both in terms of the educational
knowledge that the school transmits, and the process and experience
of schooling. In the sociology of education, it is being increasingly emphasised
that we need to pay attention not only to structures but also to
micro-level school processes and curriculum. Further, schools have come
to be seen not merely as social sites, but as cultural sites too, where significant
battles of ideology, culture and politics are fought in the everyday
context of the classroom.
The material for this chapter has been gathered using the technique
of participant observation of a government school and textual analysis of
the Zoram Bharti (Lakshmi 2005). The school is located in Chhimtuipui
district (now Saiha district) in the southeastern corner of Mizoram,
bordering Myanmar. Zoram Bharti is a Hindi textbook series for
Classes V–VIII prescribed by the state government’s Mizoram Board
of School Education at Aizawl, the state capital. The choice of a government
school and the officially prescribed school textbooks was guided,
first, by the realisation that this would enable me to see the translation of
official policies into practice and to decipher the role of the state in education,
which is as yet an unresearched and hence unfathomed area. Second,
it is necessary to understand the status of Hindi learning in Mizoram.
Hindi is a compulsory subject in Mizoram through the middle years of
schooling, from Class V to Class VIII. This is in consonance with the
central government’s National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986 which
emphasises the need for a strong and united nation, which in turn is considered
an essential pre-condition for progress (Government of India:
1992). It is believed that, among other things, the teaching of Hindi in
schools would play a key role in achieving these goals. 1
WOMEN’S POSITION IN MIZORAM
The tribal women’s position in the household is considered supreme, but
they are usually much busier than men. A typical Mizo woman’s day starts
at dawn, when she is woken up by the din created by the domestic livestock.
She begins her day by pounding and winnowing rice, after which the