Schooled for the Future? Educational Policy and Everyday Life Among Urban Squatters in Nepal (Hc)

Schooled for the future? offers an ethnographically rich account about squatter families in Kathmandu and their struggles to improve theirliving conditions and create a better future through education. Examining how people - children and adults - experience and respond to policyinitiatives aimed at improving their life the book discusses the paradoxes inherent in modern schooling. Firstly schooling promises socialjustice and equal opportunities yet it also contributes to the reproduction of social inequalities by strengthening existing class divisions andby producing a new category of unschooled people. Secondly within the context of the family schooling is attributed an economic and symbolicvalue but it is also considered a potential threat to family values based on generational hierarchy and caste identity. Through detailedethnographic accounts the author demonstrates how urban poor families experience the schooling process ambivalently both as a source ofalienation and inferiority as well as a source of self-esteem and sense of progress. Acknowledging the interconnectedness between globalnational and local forces framing and informing processes of education the book thus sheds light on the complex relationship between educationalpolicy and everyday life experiences of the urban poor in Kathmandu a hitherto understudied segment of the Nepalese society.