Overview

Educating Youth: Regulation through Psychosocial Skilling in India studies the rise in skill-based developmental interventions for young people that aim to harness youth potential. Tracing these changes to the neoliberalization of education and training globally, this book discusses how a range of training programs, from social and personality development skills to employability and vocational skills, seek to cultivate an ethic of self-responsibility through skilling, to overcome structural disadvantage among the marginalized youth. Examining one such form of training in depth, Life Skills Education or LSE, that is advocated by international organizations, such as WHO and UNICEF, and popularized in India by various actors---from the state departments of education to local non-governmental organisations and middle-class citizens—this book shows how these programmes get adapted and modified within the Indian context. It demonstrates how authoritarian adult–child relations, caste inequalities and rote culture inflect the messages for self-development that the programmes transmit. Discussing the impact of these psychosocial skilling programmes observed in the Indian context, the book reflects on the cultural disconnects and internal limitations of liberal, progressive and experiential pedagogies in achieving intended outcomes.

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9789391370039

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Combining nuanced ethnographic insights with rich theoretical perspectives, this book represents the contradictory positioning of India’s youth as either ‘population dividend’ or as masses of troublemakers. As Maithreyi explicates, ‘life-skills’ training for disadvantaged youth entails attempts to fit them into the dominant class and cultural capital apparatus and the subsequent rendering of life-skills training as meaningless to their life-worlds. The book will be a landmark study that provides insights into the trajectories of mainstream education, the misplaced orientation that overlooks the agency of youth and the personal disorientation and systemic distortions that ensue. A mustread for all educationists and education policymakers. -- Professor A. R. Vasavi * Social Anthropologist * In this brilliant new study, Maithreyi develops a compelling argument about the role of education in the formation of youth identities. The book charts with extraordinary sophistication and clarity the changing context shaping young people’s actions as well as youth efforts to reinterpret and, sometimes, transform what it means to be young and successful. A tour de force. -- Professor Craig Jeffrey * Director of the Australia India Institute and Professor of Geography, University of Melbourne, Australia *

Combining nuanced ethnographic insights with rich theoretical perspectives, this book represents the contradictory positioning of India's youth as either 'population dividend' or as masses of troublemakers. As Maithreyi explicates, 'life-skills' training for disadvantaged youth entails attempts to fit them into the dominant class and cultural capital apparatus and the subsequent rendering of life-skills training as meaningless to their life-worlds. The book will be a landmark study that provides insights into the trajectories of mainstream education, the misplaced orientation that overlooks the agency of youth and the personal disorientation and systemic distortions that ensue. A mustread for all educationists and education policymakers. -- Professor A. R. Vasavi * Social Anthropologist * In this brilliant new study, Maithreyi develops a compelling argument about the role of education in the formation of youth identities. The book charts with extraordinary sophistication and clarity the changing context shaping young people's actions as well as youth efforts to reinterpret and, sometimes, transform what it means to be young and successful. A tour de force. -- Professor Craig Jeffrey * Director of the Australia India Institute and Professor of Geography, University of Melbourne, Australia *

Author Information

R. Maithreyi is currently the Strategic Lead of the Adolescent Thematic in the Karnataka Health Promotion Trust, Bengaluru, India. She completed her PhD from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru. She has a training both in psychology (with a specialization in child guidance) and sociology of education and childhood. Her research interests span childhood and youth studies, skilling and education. Maithreyi has previously worked as a practising child psychologist at the Parijma Neurodiagnostic and Rehabilitation Centre, Bengaluru. Currently, she also leads a national study for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the World Health Organization on ‘Mapping adolescent vulnerabilities in India.’ Maithreyi has been invited to present her work on youth, skills and empowerment at several international conferences and workshops, and has published papers on the same in several international journals such as Childhood and Comparative Education.

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