Decoding Loafers’ College: Social Exclusion and Critical Pedagogic Possibilities

Abstract

In the last few decades, universities in India have witnessed the joining of a record number of students from marginalized communities and oftentimes struggle. This expansion of access has brought about changes within classrooms and college campuses, sometimes giving rise to contention and causing numerous conflicts as well. Centered around my experiences of teaching in a working-class college in Bangalore, a metropolitan city in Southern India, this paper offers reflections on education in challenging circumstances. Further, the essay explores the possibilities of democratic pedagogic practices through the theoretical framework of Maitri.

Introduction

Higher education in India continues to be embroiled in challenges related to access, equity, and justice. Even though there has been a tremendous increase in the number of students in higher education (Kapur & Mehta, 2015), at the tertiary level, the enrollment of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) continue to be less than half of the upper castes (Ministry of Education, 2020). The story of access has, however, been complicated by the embedded conflicts around caste, class, and gender. As historically disadvantaged communities have turned to education, there has also been severe backlash from the dominant communities who have long enjoyed access to the benefits of higher learning. Several scholars (Mukhopadhyay & Sarangapani, 2018; Tilak, 2008; Upadhya, 2016) have argued that the growth of Indian education since the 1990s has resulted in numerous complex parallel structures at all levels of education: on the one hand, it has led to a rise in highly selective and internationally recognized institutions of technical education and research; on the other, it has resulted in the proliferation of highly regimented and under-funded teaching institutions. The selective and internationally recognized academic spaces are predominantly occupied by the economically and socially privileged, whereas the socially disadvantaged students have found local, affiliated colleges and state universities as spaces suited for learning (Agarwal, 2009; Deshpande, 2013; Tilak, 2013; Kapur & Mehta, 2015; Tukdeo, 2015, 2019).

How do the institutions occupied by marginalized as well as privileged students function in the contemporary climate of conflict and social inequality? In what ways do these institutions teach students the skills they need as well as offer opportunities if at all, to think of larger structural issues? To answer these questions, I draw upon my ethnographic experience of teaching in a college in the city of Bangalore. In this paper, I demonstrate ways in which students make sense of their experience of higher education in relation to the social worlds they come from and how they respond to the pedagogic possibilities the college offers. During my 2 years at the college, I interacted with students, teachers, and parents in formal and informal settings. I conducted semi-structured interviews, observed formal and informal pedagogic practices inside and outside the classroom.

Location: Centenary College, Bangalore

The Centenary College ¹ is an English medium, co-educational, private minority institution that aims at enrolling students from diverse backgrounds. Most students at the college were first-generation learners who came from Dalit ² Christian, Hindu, and Muslim families that worked in informal sector jobs such as janitors, domestic workers, or daily wage laborers. The college also attracted some students from more affluent families, who, for various reasons could not secure admission in “better” institutions.

Within Bangalore, the college was popularly known as “Porki” ³ or “Loafers’ college”—hinting at a place that was not meant for the academically bright. During my time of teaching in the college, I frequently heard such name-calling and many other terms that pointed toward the lower class and caste backgrounds of the majority of students. In many ways, the Loafers’ college was at the periphery of the much-celebrated institutions of excellence in India. In addition to enrolling students who had to work part-time and had low academic performance, the college did not have past glory to claim or a future to dream.

Orientation of the College: Contextualizing the Students’ Everyday Social

The principal at the Centenary College was a Jesuit priest, scholar, and activist who took a deep and genuine interest in the wellbeing of all students, irrespective of their caste and class backgrounds. He would urge the Dalit students and teachers to assert their identity and not be ashamed of it. Under his leadership, the college emphasized critical pedagogic practices that did not conform to the norms of mainstream assimilation (Riehl, 2009). The social contexts of marginalized groups were prioritized in the everyday functioning of the college. For example, the college ran 6 days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for students and 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for teachers and other non-teaching staff. This schedule was made to aid students who worked in the afternoons and evenings. There were dedicated library hours, where students could complete their academic assignments with the help of a “teacher-mentor” if required. Group work and peer learning was an essential part of the academic culture, one where students learned to help one another. Teachers met each other regularly to discuss the progress of individual students. Another important aspect was the active engagement of parents with the college. This began at the induction program held over 3 days at the beginning of every new academic session. The third day of the induction would be held with the parents, wherein the parents were informed about the functioning of the college. This was followed up with regular interaction with the parent community about college events, the performance and absenteeism of students and so on. Teachers would regularly visit the homes of the students and engage with their parents in their mother tongue (Kannada, Tamil, and Hindi) as the majority of the parents were not conversant in English. During my interaction with parents, I observed that they were initially overwhelmed with their new role, as most of them had never engaged with teachers and other institutional authorities before. Over time, these parents became familiar with and confident during such interactions. This was a unique aspect of the college’s orientation toward its student community, as parents from stigmatized working-class backgrounds tend to remain invisible either by design or sometimes by their own choice to avoid negatively affecting their children (Walters, 2019).

Critical Pedagogic Practices

The broad philosophy of the college was modeled around critical and radical pedagogies of B. R. Ambedkar ⁴ (1989a, 1989b) and Paolo Freire ⁵ (1968). Students were encouraged to be politically aware and actively engage with social issues. Co-curricular activities included participating in protests, rallies, and social movements. The college regularly organized talks on issues of local, regional, and national importance affecting marginalized communities and the everyday lives of citizens. Students were not passive recipients of these lectures but played a proactive role in building experience-based knowledge. For example, in the aftermath of pellet gun incidents in Kashmir in 2016 (Akhzer, 2016; Barry, 2016), the college invited a group of Kashmiri youth living in Bangalore. This was at a time when the issue of Kashmir was discussed in the mainstream Indian media almost exclusively from the perspective of “national interest” alone and excluded the voices and experiences of the Kashmiri people. Retired army personnel, with service experience in Kashmir, were also invited and students interacted with both sides. This provided the students a space to engage in a dialogue and listen to varied voices. Many students expressed their surprise during the interaction about the one-sided narrative by the mainstream media. In another instance, funds were raised, and 12 students went to participate in the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) rally in Madhya Pradesh about 15 hundred kilometers from Bangalore to mark the 30^th anniversary of the protest over the building of a Dam on the Narmada River that displaced thousands of Adivasis ⁶ and submerged their lands. Upon their return, they shared their first-hand experiences with other students about the struggles of the people there.

The importance given to critical pedagogic practices at the Centenary College was crucial, especially, at a time when most mainstream colleges tended to avoid being spaces for debate, dissent, and critical thinking, and focused on inculcating job-oriented competitive values among its students. The college also framed most contemporary debates in relation to the values enshrined in the Indian constitution. This helped build the ethos of the college around egalitarian principles of the Indian constitution.

Reflections on Critical Pedagogic Practices

The debate on quality education of marginalized groups often gets limited to the question of inequality of class mobility. Aspects of critical citizenship practices, irrespective of social class remain ignored. While ensuring the economic mobility of its students was an important aspect at the Centenary College, it was not limited to that alone. The college skilled and empowered students for critical, democratic, and equal participation at par with other social groups. For example, while debates, discussions, and critical participation in socio-political issues helped students build conceptual understanding of contemporary socio-political issues, the emphasis given to the learning of the English language helped them articulate their views in wider forums. Fluency and ease in English boosted their confidence, as knowledge of the English language or the lack of it often created immediate and visible hierarchies in social spaces (Friedner, 2008). Students saw English as a means that complemented their critical educational training, especially, in a globalized world where knowledge of the English language determined social mobility and access to information to a great extent. There were other critical developments as well. One such striking change was the qualitative development of friendship and interactions between the privileged and underprivileged students and a gradual reception of each other’s social worlds.

Initially, the wealthier students could not find anything in common with students who looked different from them and came from different neighborhoods. For most students from privileged backgrounds, the college was a temporary arrangement until a better opportunity came by. The initial discomfort and distance from the working-class students were observed to shift gradually as students socialized with each other on occasions such as during the discussions on current affairs and political debates. There were clear and positive changes in the attitude of each group towards the other, such as increased bonding across social class, caste and religion mentioned above. This altered their subjective perception of each other in a constructive manner.

The concept of inequality is often contextual and subjective. This makes inequality a difficult concept to define, measure and is not straightforward in nature (Upadhya, 2016). The experience of college heightened the sense of hierarchy for a number of students, and it also opened up spaces for participation and reflection on self-worth. Melvin, ⁷ a third-year undergraduate student, reflected on this experience:

The porki thing never bothered me. Well, it actually did. It gets into your head. Whatever it is, to be honest, I have never experienced a space like this. I desired attention and I got it. Yes, it is true that sometimes, we were denied hall tickets, not allowed to sit in the examinations for having low attendance. But no one ever told me that I was worthless.

The experiences of the students at the Centenary College justify the argument that critical pedagogic practices grounded in students’ lived experiences could bring in commitment towards egalitarian social order. This commitment to foster intergroup and intra-group dialogue through critical pedagogic practices could be located in the principles of Maitri. ⁸

Reflections on Critical Pedagogic Practices Through the Theoretical Framework of Maitri

In this part, I reflect and analyze the critical pedagogic practices at the Centenary College through the theoretical framework of Maitri as developed by Guru and Sarukkai (2019). Maitri also constitutes an important part of Ambedkar’s understanding of removing inequality from society (Guru & Sarukkai, 2019). Guru and Sarukkai propose Maitri as a normative good that needs to be possessed by every member of the society across social boundaries of caste, class, gender, religion, and race in order to develop egalitarian practices. They argue that the concept of Maitri is the realization of equality of moral values across social hierarchies of caste, class, gender, race, and religion. These include the hierarchy of moral values and discrimination based on the governing principles of caste (Jodhka, 2012; Sarukkai, 2009), the hierarchy of tastes, etiquettes of the dominant classes (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990), the legitimization and hierarchy of merit-based selection as a virtue (Sandel, 2020), and so on.

In Centenary College, students belonging to different classes and castes interacted, and through the mediation of critical pedagogy, they imagined a novel social world that was created with ideas, deep knowledge of history, and principles of egalitarianism. The pedagogic processes of conscientization and praxis (Freire, 1968) in the college enabled the students with the capacity to reflect and create this new social world based on their lived experiences (Guru, 2012). The learned and practiced values of cooperation and collective action replaced the values of competition and living in isolated living within one’s caste, class, and gender hierarchies.

The argument for a common and democratic system of education is important for it involves breaking away from insular living to creating a space for Maitri. It is also important to reconfigure what excellence in Indian education can mean. The participation of marginalized groups needs to happen beyond their customary inclusion.

Conclusion

We live in an increasingly divided society that is marked by unequal access to quality education. The gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen. In such a context, for historically marginalized groups, the need for higher education has never been as important and acutely felt, as it is today. However, such communities are finding it increasingly difficult to navigate the field of higher education. Affirmative action and welfare schemes for the marginalized communities are often resisted by the privileged groups in favor of merit-based selection, which is highly selective and biased towards the skills taught to the privileged. Besides, the isolated existence of antagonistic social groups often creates room for non-cooperation and breeds inequality. This has serious social implications. The pedagogical practices at the Centenary College in Bangalore demonstrated that these issues could be addressed through the creation of a conscious public sphere within the space of a college to democratize educational institutions. Quite often, one thinks of the public sphere as the function of the government or the public in general. However, what the Centenary College showed is that within a private, localized space it is important to create a space that is analogous to a public sphere. The majority of Indian colleges lack the possibility of such public spaces within them. The practices of the Centenary College proved how the creation of such a public sphere within the college was liberatory and thus is a model for other colleges and universities to follow. However, the mere presence of different social groups in a given space is not sufficient to democratize educational spaces. This requires concerted efforts and pedagogic interventions since egalitarianism is a collective process-oriented praxis. A true dialogical approach should encompass the scope for unconditional interactions based on the principles of Maitri across antagonistic social groups and institutions. In the world of Indian higher education, buzzing with meritocracy and corporatization, the practices initiated at the Centenary College offer an opportunity to reflect and act.