The tragedy of first-gen pupils

The saddest child in any school is the child whose parents are not educated, sometimes even illiterate. Yet, they are ambitious and believe that their children should not only go to school but to an English-medium school. These parents, generally belonging to socio-economically disadvantaged communities, have spawned thousands of useless private schools that call themselves English-medium schools without a semblance of anything English about them except the “Mummy Daddy” culture.

I remember a cartoon drawn by Murthy in these columns long ago. A legislator who is a strong advocate for Kannada is seated on the steps of Vidhana Soudha, shouting slogans against English, with a group of uniformed kids walking past, one of them waving, “Bye bye, Daddy!” Call it an illusion or snobbery, but every impoverished slum dweller has a dream that his children should get a “proper” English education to lead a better life than his.

And so the growth of substandard, unrecognised English schools where teachers educated in similar institutions teach. The child whose parents are uneducated or illiterate is at a crossroads today with teachers who are unfit to teach and parents who cannot help their kids learn. Desperate situations call for desperate remedies. Frantic parents enrol their child in private tuition, where another improperly qualified tutor makes matters worse. And so it goes on. First-generation learners are handicapped in many ways.

They generally belong to socially disadvantaged communities like Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes and have no role models to follow within the family or among their social contacts. Navigating the academic system itself can be overwhelming and incomprehensible to them, apart from other complex and alien conditions where even peers may shun their company. They may have difficulty understanding the lessons that are taught and get low scores on tests. Even their teachers may resent having to cope with their academic deficiencies and neglect them in the classroom. This can lead to lower scores in examinations. Many schools are known to call parents to complain about their kids and even offer a transfer certificate to go elsewhere. Again, even though these children have many strengths,
like uncanny abilities in sports and field games, they will still encounter several challenges, like being ostracised during play time or ridiculed at
lunch time.

Children can be cruel. The first-generation student faces challenges in being accepted by her peers—sometimes by her very teachers. A slum school that I visited once revealed the challenges that these children encountered in the classroom or on the playground. Neglected by their teachers, ridiculed by their classmates, and finding little support at home, these young kids are “the nowhere” children in their own social circle and outside its boundaries too. The psychological, academic, and social challenges that they face inside the classroom or outside on the playing field are devastating. The psychological challenges are the worst. No wonder one in three students leaves school within the first three years. A glance at the dropout rate in primary schools in India shows the travails faced by these unfortunate pupils.

Of all the challenges they face, the psychological ones are the worst. Filled with guilt whose origin they cannot comprehend, these children suffer silently, sometimes violently. The latter encourages teachers to label them as “abnormal” and propose a transfer certificate to be moved to some other school. Worse, there are schools that quietly get rid of these kids by referring them to a psychiatrist. The last is not a very pretty story. The psychiatrist takes over and begins “treating” a normal child like a mentally ill patient. I had read similar stories happening in foreign countries like the US or UK where normal children became the pawns played between pharmaceutical companies, schools, and pupils from poor families. Now, when I see or hear of similar things taking place in schools located in the large slums of Bengaluru, it is scary.

There are other insurmountable challenges faced by first-generation students. Many of these are social and psychological, which can disturb a sensitive child. The worst is the lack of acceptance from their classmates, which they simply cannot understand. They are forced to play alone during breaks or eat alone during lunch time. They cannot share things like the others do, and they wonder why their presence is shunned. The caste and class systems are practiced subtly but powerfully in schools even today. They may be the targets of prejudice in reference to both their minority status and lower socio-economic status. These experiences can lead to alienation and loneliness, which can make school life a miserable experience. Do the authorities care?