Krishna Kumar’s deep and critical engagement with education and its impact on the child is clearly reflected in the slim volume of 18 collected essays, Smaller Citizens: Writings on the Making of Indian Citizens. Some of these essays have been published earlier, while others appeared in the form of lectures which the author had delivered at various fora. Bringing these essays together in a single volume signifies the common theme that binds all of them together. The author, with a critical lens, explores themes of education and citizenship, marginalized childhoods and schooling. He examines policy documents that focus on flexibility and contextualization of curricula, standards, assessment as well as the manner in which discriminatory practices define Indian education and how educationists and practitioners merely pay lip service to far-sighted Indian policy documents. Kumar, with a fine pencil, is able to highlight the systemic bias that makes institutions resistant to change. The insights developed help the reader in locating the child within socio-political complexities while understanding education in India and its intersection with citizenship.
December 2022, volume 46, No 12