AT HOME WITH BALA, RACHEL AND VIKNESH : EXPLORING ACADEMIC UNDERACHIEVEMENT AMONG INDIAN CHILDREN IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

As a sociological study it, firstly, describes how children have been identified as 'underachievers', objectively and subjectively at school and at home. Secondly, it interprets the ways in which they adapt, resist or retreat from interventionist or remedial efforts targeted at their 'problem' of academic underachievement. Thirdly, it maps the sociology inhering within the processes of 'underachieving' and the children's statuses as 'underachievers'. It is a sociological study because it rests on the theoretical proposition that the academic 'underachiever' is a product of social processes transpiring in the family, among friends and between teachers, which are located in turn within the wider social order. The sociological understanding of 'underachievement' stands out against psychological definitions, which locate 'underachievement' as individual cognitive pathology or as rooted in a 'dysfunctional' home, peer or school environment. Particularly, it is an ethnographic study with the special focus on how Indian children experience learning, if at all, at home and at school. Six 'Indian' children, four males and two females, from diverse ethnic, class, language and religious backgrounds were sampled for the present study. Apart from participant observation, loosely structured oral interviews were conducted with the children's parents and peers, as well as teachers in schools for purposes of triangulation and holism. The purpose of this study arose in part as a response to the panic often created by Indian politicians and highlighted by the print media that Indian families continue to be plagued by parents' low literacy levels, family violence and alcoholism. Intuitively, these factors could be 'dysfunctional' to a child's academic performance. Sociologically, it is argued, however, that the three conditions outlined above could be traced to 'bigger' explanatory variables, which lie in the wider social order and thus, transcend individual or familial 'deficiencies' or 'dysfunctionalism'. Correspondingly, the present study argues that the problem of academic 'underachievement' as "rooted in both parent and child alike", especially among lower income groups, is a weak thesis. In other words, the 'dysfunctional' 'Indian' family is a weak explanatory variable to account for academic 'underachievement' among children. That the problem is a purely cultural/religious or linguistic one is also a weak conclusion, requiring instead a rigorous class analysis and a fourth, historical, component to strengthen it. In a nutshell, it is the intersection across and interaction between ethnicity, class, language, religion and history as 'bigger' and powerful explanatory variables that are to be neither discounted nor underestimated in any way whenever one engages in the debate over academic 'underachievement' among Indian children in Singapore.