"I Wish They Would Teach English to Our Children Too": Entanglements of Language, Power, and Neocolonialism in India (Poster 45)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Six
  In Poster Session: (Re)Framing and (Re)Claiming: Partnering With Communities and Families to Critically Examine Practices, Policies, and Approaches in Early Childhood

Abstract

This paper would present how parents, teachers and administrators in a private preschool program that catered to high SES families, and a non-profit run preschool center that catered to children from low SES families in Delhi, India, think about English language to succeed in life and move up the social ladder. I draw on Mills' theory of Racial Contract (1997) and Ambedkar’s (2014; 1917) theorization of caste in India to understand how ECE practices and school readiness might not be a transparent public good but mechanisms to educate young children in differentiated ways as “humans” or “others”. I argue that decolonization is an extremely complex construct and needs to be examined in the larger context for it to be socially just.

Author

• Shubhi Sachdeva, San Francisco State University
  Presenting Author