Why Gandhi Now? Reclaiming Education for the Social Majorities

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

For the past 30 years US public education, along with other nations, has supported a colonial model of education that promotes teaching dependence on hierarchical marcrosystems, ones that impede local control and grassroots interdependence. We challenge this model through Gandhian principles of swaraj (self-rule) and swadeshi (self-reliance). Unfortunately, little attention has been paid within the broader education community to the relevance of Gandhian thought for contemporary times. Accordingly, this symposium explores Gandhi’s belief that education must be interrelated with human experience, focus on developing dedication to truth and nonviolence, and assume means and ends and work and knowledge are inseparable. We connect Gandhi’s life and work to the theme of this year’s AERA: “to know is not enough.”

Sub Unit

• Division B - Curriculum Studies / Section 1: Critical Perspectives and Practices

Chair

• Jennifer April Sandlin, Arizona State University

Papers

• Complicity as a Good Tool for New Times: Thinking Gandhi in Education as Insurrecting Interiority in Life Histories Research - Erik L. Malewski, Kennesaw State University

• Why Gandhi Now? Using Grassroots Postmodernism to Bring Gandhi to Bear Upon the Urgent Present - Madhu Suri SURI Prakash, The Pennsylvania State University

• An Autoethnographic Reading of Gandhi as a Cultural Text - Suniti Sharma, Saint Joseph's University

• An Embodied Invitation to the Unborn Song: A Dancer/Poet’s Response to Gandhi and Tagore - Celeste N. Snowber, Simon Fraser University

Discussant

• Reta Ugena Whitlock, Kennesaw State University