Guest post by  Rekha and Rahul (pseudonyms).

Two early-career teachers in private universities in India reflect on what has quietly transformed in their classrooms over the last few years, as they trace the rise of a new norm of ‘silence’. Their reflections ask what it means to teach in the intimate classroom space as it begins to mirror the shrinking democratic space and what forms of care, courage and pedagogy might keep the classroom thinking in these changing times. 

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In the last half a decade, i’ve felt my classroom in a private Indian university change in ways that are hard to capture through the usual metrics. The checklist  is enviable: i retain full freedom to design courses, assign authors i want and structure electives around questions that matter to me.  And yet, in one of the courses while teaching Margaret Canovan’s piece on ‘Two Faces of Democracy’, i realised what had changed. There is a subtle paradox: the formal freedoms of the private university remain in place, but the informal ecology of the classrooms has altered. 

Continue reading Pedagogical Reflections on Silence in the Classroom: Rekha* and Rahul* →