One of my goals while on sabbatical was to start this blog and post brief descriptions of the places I knew I would be visiting for my research. For the longest time I was undecided on whether to make this a professional blog or a more personal blog. I realized eventually that many of my cultural and social experiences would indeed serve to frame my professional insights into the topic that I was researching - early education and teacher preparation in South Asia. The blog would be my attempt to reconcile these experiences. So far I have posted descriptions of places and experiences and now I hope to make the shift into discussions related specifically to education, against the backdrop of the socio-cultural-historical images already presented in previous posts. "Intimate connections are seen to exist between a culture's philosophical values and its educational values that shape schooling and curriculum in that society...Educational philosophies are usually expressions of a society's deepest beliefs and values...A system of education is most commonly derived in response to questions such as: What is the aim of education? What are the activities that will achieve that aim? What are the learning theories that will govern the activities? What are the teaching and assessment strategies that will be used? What is the nature of the role of the students, teachers, and administrators? The answers to such questions form the educational philosophy of a school or society." From Going to School in South Asia