Authors: Shivangi Tiwary, Aishwarya Shrivastav, Barnamala Roy, Wilson Biswakarma and Afreen Anwar (IUIF 2020)
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves”, Thoreau said. A quote that is very apt in the context of mental health awareness in India. Issues surrounding mental health pose a huge threat to students’ wellbeing in an academic and social setting. Education systems across India often deal with this subject matter through a more cultural lens as opposed to educational policies. Section 17, Chapter IV of Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) act of 2009 prohibits any child from being subjected to physical punishment or mental harassment, however, is this enough? According to World health Organization (WHO), 90 million Indians suffer from mental health crisis, around 150 million people need immediate interventions and suicide is found to be the biggest cause of death between the ages of 15-35 years.
As debilitating as this data is, human suffering is not quantifiable. There are many contributing aspects to the mental health crisis in Indian education system which requires a thorough understanding of the psychology of young adults from an evolutionary perspective.
Dia from Kolkata recalls an incident from her first grade in school, in which the teacher’s discriminatory comment severely affected her confidence. The teacher, Mrs. Kay, was a superintendent and quite the role model among students. Once, she was doing her regular round and glancing through everyone’s class-work notebook. As Mrs. Kay stopped by Dia’s bench, she cringed at her notebook. Dia’s heart missed several beats as Mrs. Kay slammed the notebook down on the desk and pointed her red pen at the incorrect spelling of “False”. She lightly shook her head and told Dia, through gritted teeth, the correct spelling. Dia’s embarrassment and resentment were aggravated by the fact that the boy beside had mistakenly written the spelling of car as “cur” but he had been exempted from a similar treatment. In fact, the teacher had coddled his cheek and smiled and cooed: “Sourav, You?!”
This incident relates that in this country, there is a complex relationship between culture and society, and this often results in the internalisation of the patriarchal notion that “girls are lesser than boys” amongst teachers. Dr. Urvashi Sahni, the author of Reaching for the Sky: Empowering Girls Through Education, says: “Education, especially for girls living in countries like India, is an extremely complex undertaking; it requires a multi-perspective approach to be understood and addressed effectively. If we want education to mitigate the harm caused to the girl by nexus of poverty, violence, early marriage, abuse within and outside families, and lack of care, then we need to look closely at the important perspectives of those who are most affected by the issues and problems—i.e., girls themselves, their parents and their teachers.”
Ayesha, a North Indian student living in Pondicherry, recalls the discrimination she faced as being a light-skinned person living in South India. There is an extreme form of colourism and racism in schools in South India, and often teachers are the highest contributors in discriminating against a student based on their skin tone. Favoritisms begin to play a role and among students, there is a sense of entanglement in their friendship.
One day, her teachers were searching for students to do a video shoot and because she is fair skinned, she got selected instantly. However, her friend who is not light-skinned was told that her complexion is too dark for the camera and hence was not selected. At that moment, the children were confused, and Ayesha’s friend did not like the favoritism the teacher was showing towards her based-on skin colour. Ayesha questioned her teacher about it and was simply asked to do what she was told and not raise unnecessary questions. Since that day on, everyone’s attitude towards her changed. She was treated as an outsider throughout her school life and this made her feel insecure in her own skin and she dreaded going to school every day. It is difficult to understand gender equity and education from the lens of mental health as young kids are not as expressive as adults about emotional distress or traumas.
When a child’s internal stress and anxiety manifests in strange behavioral ways, also known as conversion disorder, without any noticeable symptoms of mental health, it goes untreated. India’s healthcare budget has only spent 50 million rupees annually on mental health which implies, only 33 paisa per patient. Ultimately, any education system reflects the way a child progresses in life. The treatments given to students have a powerful impact on the type of world that is shaping forward. Encouraging behavior can have a constructive ripple effect at large. Here is how:
In Dooars, Tea Garden workers usually do not send their children to schools that are expensive and somewhat far fetched but sending Nelson to one was the best thing his parents did for him. He started school in 2002, when his school fees were under one thousand rupees, which was a lot of money for a family of tea garden workers. As he reached middle school the school expenses became bigger; the uniforms, the projects and assignments, the torn shoe, the new bag etc, it became extremely difficult, as a result, his mother started work as domestic help. One afternoon in 2011 things changed, as the class teacher called Nelson and informed about the Right to Education Act, 2009 and said that he will not have to worry about school fees anymore. This news was no short of a blessing. The school fees were 2700/- rupees at the time but because of the exemptions under RTE, he only had to pay only the computer fee which was 150/- rupees. He was one among many SC/ST/OBC/BPL students who got the benefits of the RTE Act 2009. The best part was that he was not even aware of the policy, but the teachers and management made sure that the students who qualified for the benefits did receive them.
In India, the idea of guru-shishya is so pertinent that teachers become the role model for children at a very early stage. The role of teachers becomes crucial in this scenario for the healthy child development. Teachers are also the social product of this society which functions on caste, class, and gender norms on an everyday basis. Here teacher training, sensitization and counselling becomes important for an equitable learning environment.
The examples above show the ways of teachers and management that can change the dynamics of learning as well as the proper implementation of policies in the education sector. The National Education Policy, though tries to focus on teacher training and empowerment, it does that in a very neoliberal and corporatized format. The emphasis on buzzwords like motivation and empowerment of teachers misses the aspect of empathy and care towards students. The focus is entirely on professionalism, which is not defined. Will professionalism include a teacher’s attitude towards children from the marginalized background? We do not know. It seems that it is left to the individual teachers to decide.
The NEP says that the common goal of this new policy is that the “children are learning”. What they are learning, who they are learning from is not dealt with in the policy. It mentions that School complexes could also have counsellors, trained social workers, technical and maintenance staff, etc.
Involvement of parents in the school management committee could be detrimental to the child’s holistic development considering how our society functions. Will the government be willing to give counselling to parents and teachers? If so, then will it have enough funds to sensitize and give counselling to parents as well? We shall see.
(Names changed for privacy reasons)
Image Credit: World Bank Photo Collection
