Overlooking the Idea of Common School in the Education Policy

In the 1830s, Horace Mann proposed common schools, that is, tax-funded schools attended by all the children from the neighbourhood, irrespective of their social backgrounds. For Mann, such schools were crucial to fostering social harmony, political stability, and economic growth in a republican democracy. Ever since, this idea has travelled across the world. In India, it was formally proposed by the Education Commission, 1966, but the seeds of this idea can be traced back to the 1920s when the national education system took shape. M K Gandhi in his presidential address to the Indian National Congress in Belgaum in 1924, asserted,