Dalit Education: A Psycho-Social Perspective

Abstract

Education means different things to different people. Education is normally understood and defined as a process in which the educand undergoes a formal training in an institutional setting with a prescribed curriculum and well-formulated texts, under the guidance of subject experts. As far as its characteristics are concerned, it is a process as well as a product. It plays a vital role in the holistic formation of human persons. Specifically, it contributes to and is concerned with constructive changes in their intellects, characters and behaviors with the fellow members in their community and society at large. Dalit education, while following the normal norms and undergoing the usual procedure, can be viewed as a mental process through which a non-human person tries to get rid of all the clutches of socio-cultural oppressions and establish its own identity and resume its lost human dignity. This article approaches ‘education’ from a psycho-social perspective of Dalits in India and Tamil Nadu in particular and surpasses its formal meaning into a deeper meaning and underpins its pivotal and dynamic role in human formation and flourishing of Dalits in the social sphere. In the course of empowering the weaker sections of the society, education is not merely a means of economic and materialistic development but occupies an irreplaceable position and becomes the liberating tool in terms of freeing their caged psyche, frozen thoughts and fixed thought-patterns and leading them into a fresh mental framework, with vibrant thought-patterns and creative thinking which would certainly make them biologically strong, psychologically healthy and socially effective. This paper, while hinting upon the trio-interwoven-nature of education, theoretically and psychologically expounds on the psycho-social perspective of Dalit-education.