The ‘9th – 10th dipole system’ that constitutes high school in marginalized contexts in Tamil Nadu, India

• In Event: Post-COVID High-Stakes Exams in Comparative Perspective: Youth Experiences in Marginalized Secondary Schools in Colombia, India, and Malawi

Proposal

This paper draws on nearly two years of classroom- and community-based ethnographic research that sought to understand the high school experiences of students in marginalized communities; in particular, students at a government ‘welfare school’ in rural Tamil Nadu (India), that predominantly serves historically disadvantaged scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) households.
Over this period, weI followed a cohort of some sixty students into their 9th grade classrooms, first, as they recommenced schooling in August 2021 (after the Covid-19 pandemic); and then, as they transitioned into the 10th grade, the terminal high school class marked by public ‘board exams’ that sort/track them into higher secondary education streams and effectively determine their future trajectories. During this time, as weI observed them at school or interviewed them at home, what became quickly apparent was the absolute contrast between the 9th and 10th grades, in terms of classroom experiences as well as expectations. Students in the 9th grade spent endless ‘free periods’ playing kabaddi or singing film-songs and swapping gossip in the classroom, not only expecting such a “jolly” time in school but also expecting to pass the 9th grade exam irrespective of their (abysmal) performance. The moment they entered the 10th grade, however, marked a complete, almost magical, transformation: from being “jolly” to, as students put it, being “serious”, eschewing free period upon free period for a daily grind of extra-classes and paid tuition-classes and entirely forgoing the pleasures of television and film in order to work out endless ‘sample’ question-papers.
While this transformation was driven by the ‘board exam’ on the horizon and sustained by numerous daily classroom rituals and practices that required significant sacrifices from students as well as teachers, this paper considers:
(a) how the stark 9th-10th contrast, while “successful” in producing acceptable student pass-marks and school pass-percentages, also perpetuated a thin experience of learning-to-the-test – such that a student who passed the English board exam was unable to read English at all; and
(b) how the stark contrast between the 9th and 10th grades was, in fact, a pragmatic and calculated response that teachers and students – especially given their marginalized status – co-constructed, in order to cope with a wider school system that was poorly-resourced and internally contradictory.
Between pragmatic responses and magical transformations, some of these students, despite their historical disadvantage, continued into higher education. On the other hand, might their learning-poor experience of high school limit their participation in higher education in a way that, in effect, reproduces their marginal status?

Authors

• Amita Chudgar, Michigan State University

• Miriam Thangaraj

• Aanchal Gidra, Michigan State University