may not always be aware of it. Let us look at some examples. The room you might be in now is a cultural product. It is the result of someone’s architectural ideas and building skills.
Your room may be rectangular, but there are many places where rooms are not rectangular (e.g., those of Eskimos). While reading this chapter you might be sitting on a chair that some people designed and built some time ago. Since sitting in a chair requires a particular posture, this invention is shaping your behaviour. There are societies without chairs.
Just try to think how people in those societies would be sitting in order to do some reading. Students sit on chairs in the “classrooms”, but chairs are not found in all schools. In schools in most villages there are no chairs for students. They sit on the ground, or on a piece of sack spread over it.
That in some societies children gather in rooms facing a teacher is another kind of cultural product, called “schooling”. This institution may have material aspects, such as buildings, and ideational aspects, such as the notion that schooling should take place at a specific place and time, or the idea that individuals attending “schools” must be evaluated and given certificates on successful completion of schooling. This institution also provides with behavioural expectation for all those who participate in it . Both teachers and students have a series of roles to play and responsibilities to share.
Individuals, families and communities have different views about schooling. Some believe that school education is a valuable thing. They have unshaken faith that school education can make people powerful and change their destiny. Others consider it neither valuable nor do they have faith in its strength as such.
Some societies emphasise on equal education for boys and girls; others do not. Some groups widely participate in the process of schooling, others (e.g., some tribal groups) participate little or not at all. People with special needs often remain deprived of school education for a number of reasons. People’s views about communities, gender, caste groups and