"Caged animals": the reproduction of social and educational inequalities in Indian secondary schools

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Reproduction of Social Inequalities: Violence, Exclusion and Marginalization

Proposal

Background: There is a continued crisis in public schooling in India’s low-income and socially disadvantaged communities. Schools are supposed to provide a safe and healthy environment conducive to learning that ultimately helps to disrupt the transmission of intergenerational poverty and leads to social and economic mobility among low-income and socially disadvantaged students. In practice, however, schools have served to disproportionately exclude marginalized populations from attaining quality education. Previous research has revealed that less affluent students attend under-resourced schools in buildings with poor infrastructural facilities and fewer or unqualified teachers (India Infrastructure Report, 2012), where they face hidden normative barriers that negatively affect their schooling experiences and result in their exclusion (Kabeer, 2000; Sayed et al., 2007).

Aim of this paper: This paper examines how the use of violent school discipline by teachers impacts student engagement and shapes their perceptions of self and sense of school belonging. This paper is part of a larger ethnographic study of two secondary schools in Sitapur district in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. The project seeks to understand the factors that shape students’ everyday classroom experiences in secondary schools and how these factors impact student engagement and learning outcomes, students’ perceptions of self, and sense of school belonging. In doing so, it investigates how schools may or may not aid in reproducing educational and social inequalities. I bring the students’ voices to light to better understand the lived everyday experiences of these students inside their schools.

Data and Methods: Data for this paper was drawn from multiple methods, including participant observations, in-depth interviews with students and teachers, and informal discussions with students and teachers. Since this is a study about students’ experiences, the core of the study centers upon the experiences of Grade IX students (aged 13-16 years) at the two schools. The students who attend these schools belong to low-income and socially disadvantaged communities, most of whom live in rural areas.

Theory: This paper uses the theory of social exclusion to describe how exclusionary practices in schools reinforce the social and educational inequalities among students from low-income and socially disadvantaged backgrounds. I treat social exclusion as an outcome and a process in this research paper. As an outcome, exclusion refers to the state of being excluded, while, as a process, it refers to the discriminatory practices that may lead to the reproduction of social, economic, and educational inequalities and exclusion. I use the social exclusion lens to identify the key aspects of who is excluded, exclusion from what, excluded by whom, and excluded how. The processes that led to social exclusion included labeling of students, teachers' deficit views, the use of violent discipline, and discriminatory practices.

Findings: Evidence from this study suggests the persistent use of violent disciplinary practices by teachers to punish and reprimand poor and lower caste students. As I conducted the research for this paper, I heard story after story about the students’ experiences of violent discipline and discrimination at schools. Students made statements like “teachers beat us with their words,” “every teacher beats if the work is incomplete,” or “so what if I did not finish the homework, I will just have to endure the teacher’s beating.” The negative schooling experiences of social discrimination, violent discipline, and abuse by teachers, which the peers reinforce, make students feel alienated and excluded and diminish their sense of school belonging. Students internalize this discourse of discrimination and violence against them and justify teachers’ use of violence as “for their own good.” These schooling processes and practices serve to discipline and punish students and push them out of school and into a life of limited opportunities and restrict their social and economic mobility.

Furthermore, the study’s results indicate that students try to break free and exclude themselves from the humiliating hierarchical school system by skipping school and remaining absent. By responding to violent discipline by skipping school, students exercise their agency and resist the harsh, toxic, and humiliating experiences at school. School absenteeism is traditionally seen through a negative lens and labeled as truancy or unexplained absences; however, in this study, I show that by responding to violent abuse by remaining absent, students are protecting their dignity. Students are trying to break free from a system that is meant to uplift them but ends up restricting them in terms of their educational outcomes, aspirations, and future opportunities. Nevertheless, by responding and resisting in the ways they do, students end up participating in their own exclusion from educational opportunities. In this manner, schools reinforce the social order and lead to the social and educational exclusion of poor and lower caste students. In conclusion, teachers’ lack of care and deficit thinking creates an exclusionary cycle of learning and inadvertently pushes students out of school, and perpetuates the long-standing social and educational inequalities creating an inequitable school system.

Contribution: This paper aims to contribute to the comparative and international education research by casting a light on teachers’ lack of care and deficit thinking that creates an exclusionary cycle from learning for disadvantaged students and inadvertently pushes them out of schools and perpetuates the long-standing social and educational inequalities creating an inequitable school system. I contribute to the educational discourse that focuses on social justice and equity. I hope that through this paper, readers will gain an appreciation for the traumatic experiences and educational inequalities faced by students and the entrenched and long-lasting impact of violence and injustice on their lives.

Conclusion: This dissertation contributes to the research literature on the “black box” of secondary schooling by gathering detailed insights into marginalized students’ schooling experiences of social discrimination in large-scale research, whose voices are rarely heard. The findings suggest the need for concepts of self-reflexivity, culturally responsive practices, and Human Rights Education (HRE) to be introduced in teacher training to counter the deficit views and stereotype threats held by teachers and for teachers’ transformation so that they can become allies to students and focus on the root of the problem than punish them for their mistakes.

Author

• Vishakha Agarwal, University of Massachusetts Boston