Emerging Trends in Higher Education

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Curricular Development and Value Education: A Tentative Outline

Upendra Baxi^*

Plurality and Pluralism

The question of value plurality in the provision of educational services,¹ whether under state auspices, faith schools, or other private institutions, has been intransigently raised in India in several changing political contexts.

The phrase ‘value plurality’ needs to be distinguished from its next of kin—‘value pluralism’. Plurality is an irreducible, and often a formidable, social fact. Pluralism is a normative or ideological construct about ways of constructing, respecting, and negotiating identity and difference. As is well known, three principal agencies of social control (and, if I may also add, social change)—law, education, and religion—affect ...