Dilemmas of Pedagogy for Sustainable Development in an Indian Elite School

Over the past three decades, a large number of elite schools have emerged in India, to meet the growing demand for ‘quality’ education among India’s rapidly growing middle class. These schools often compete with the... [ view full abstract ]

Over the past three decades, a large number of elite schools have emerged in India, to meet the growing demand for ‘quality’ education among India’s rapidly growing middle class. These schools often compete with the older elite schools that had been created during the colonial period in India. Both such schools however are deeply conscious of their privileged status. In a range of ways, they seek to set themselves apart from India’s massive but poorly resourced system of public schools. They do this by embracing a globally converging discourse that stresses the need to prepare students for a global economy through the teaching of twentieth century skills and the like. At the same time, however, these schools are not unaware of the responsibilities that they have to the environment and their local communities. Fashionably, they profess a commitment to the goal of sustainable development.

Drawing upon data collected over 2012-2015, I want to discuss in this paper how an Indian elite school established during the 19^th century interprets the notion of sustainable development, and seeks to structure its pedagogies around a range of moral notions involving environmental consciousness and service learning. I want to argue that the school’s attempts to reconcile its increasingly global orientation with local imperatives are trapped within a system of unequal class relations. This creates a dilemma for the school in how to reconcile its commitment to sustainable development with the work it also does in reproducing its class privilege by seeking to position itself within the growing market of internationally-oriented elite schools in India.