128 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
situation or to educational theory or practice. Though the data show that the public school system in contemporary India is ineffective even for catering to the educational needs of the upper class, the study has refrained from making the obvious conclusions on its relevance to the Indian context. On the other hand the statement that "as class-linked institutions," public schools "offer the social and economic advantages of a good education to those who can afford to pay for it9'10 is a contradiction of the evidence that emerges from the data but remains unsaid.
On the whole one has to agree with De Souza when he says that he has provided "a structural analysis of the public schools."11 Though the work is a good example of structural-functional exercise in analysing an irrelevant and anachronistitc institution, one cannot but concede the relevance of such studies to contemporary sociological analysis.
G RAMACHANDRA RAJ
1 Alfred De Souza, Indian Public Schools : A Sociological Study, p 8.
2 Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p 37.
Ibid., ch. I.
Ibid., p 65.
Ibid., p 137.
Ibid., p 106.
Ibid., pp 15 ], 180, 220, 221. r 7W., p 276. 11 Ibid., p283.