Exploring Asia-Pacific: Collection of Essays on Education

Indian Association For Asian & Pacific Studies has a programme of organising four academic lectures of different distinguished scholars in a calendar year. The Association organises such lectures either independently or in collaboration with different academic bodies.

The first lecture programme of 2006-07 was organised on July 13, 2007. The speaker was Dr. Madhumala Sengupta, Professor, Department of Education, University of Kolkata. She spoke on The State of Higher Education in Perspective of Globalisation.

The second lecture programme was organized on September 28, 2007. The speaker was Professor Dr. Sandhya Basu, Department of Philosophy, Rabindra Bharati University. She spoke on Rights of Man and the Light of Right Education.

The third & final Lecture programme of the year was the Renuka & Rathindranath Guha Memorial Lecture. Professor Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, Surendranath Banerjee Chair Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Kolkata delivered this talk on Intellectuals, Knowledge and Masses: A Question of Pedagogy.

For this booklet, we have added another lecture by Dr. Gauri Srivastava who carne for our Seminar on Globalisation and State of Higher Education and she delivered talk on a very significant subject, i.e. Curriculum and Text Books in SAARC Countries. Her talk is entitled - Curriculum and Text Books in SAARC Countries: Stepping Stone to Higher Education.

We are glad to present these valuable talks in printed form to all our members and all readers who take interest in the subjects.

In this occasion we acknowledge our gratefulness to all speakers who have permitted us to bring out this collection and provided us with their articles. Our sincere thanks and gratitude also go to Professor P. K. Chakraborty, Department of Education, Professor Madhumala Sengupta, Department of Education, University of Kolkata, Professor Chittabrata Palit, Department of History, Jadavpur University and to Professor Radharaman Chakraborty, Former Vice Chancellor, Netaji Subhas Open University who were chairpersons in the respective lecture programmes. We also extend our gratitude to the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences & Humanities Department of South & South-East Asian Studies of Kolkata University which collaborated with us. This volume is brought out in published form in collaboration with Maha Bodhi Book Agency, Kolkata.