Book excerpt: This thoroughly revised and updated text, now in its Second Edition, is intended as a textbook for undergraduate students of Education. The book provides a detailed insight into the stages of evolution of Education in the country and the ongoing trends in the field. The book, divided into twenty-five chapters, continues to explain the history of Indian education, its several commissions, the issues that beset primary, secondary, higher and adult education, national integration and international understanding, democracy, human rights, value crisis, the recent trends of globalisation, and the changes brought into the education and technology. New to the second Edition • The text now incorporates a new chapter on Twenty-First Century….The Way Forward, which talks about the recent trends in the field. • New Sections on Formal Education, Informal Education, Aims of Education, Philosophies of Education, Free and Compulsory Education as Fundamental Right and RTE Act of 2010, Different Boards of Educations, Recommendation of National Knowledge Commission (2008), Rationale for Secondary Education, Higher Education Institutions, Issues and Limitations of Environmental Education and Non-formal Education have been added in various chapters. • Several sections have been updated to provide the reader with the latest information taking place in the field of Education.