In the past week, various social media accounts, including that of Tamil Nadu BJP spokesperson SG Suryah, have been posting videos of Tamil Nadu’s government school students ‘acting out’ on campuses. The teenage students are seen using abusive language with teachers, vandalising school property, having shouting matches with a staff member, or dancing and laughing in classrooms in the middle of a lesson. A handful of these videos surfacing all at once has led to an impression that these incidents are happening only in government schools.
TNM has not been able to independently verify the dates of these incidents, the authenticity of the locations attributed to them or find out how these videos happened to be shot and circulated on social media. However, we asked experts if the sharing of such videos is the right way to approach the problem, if there has been an increase in the incidence of school children acting out and if that has anything to do with the long gap of nearly one-and-a-half years where children were away from school.
Some, like Aarti C Rajaratnam a psychologist who specialises in childhood and adolescent mental health and also works closely with government school students, points out that there is no special uptick in schoolchildren misbehaving. However, the fact that it has become news-worthy is what is new. “Isolated incidents are getting recorded and then spread across platforms via technology we didn’t have a few years ago. Now, we also have a concept of social media trends. If something trends on social media, more of that comes along.”
Others, like Andrew Sesuraj M, State Convenor for Tamil Nadu Child Rights Watch hold a different view. “I won’t say such incidents have not been happening. Yes, they are, but we have to understand certain elements. Due to consecutive COVID-19 induced lockdowns, for almost one-and-a-half years, there have been no in-person classes. Government school students mostly did not even have access to online classes in that period. School isn’t just about education. It’s also a place for socialisation. There was a gap in the development of socialisation skills in adolescent students in the lockdown period.”
However, all of the experts TNM spoke to agreed that spreading these videos does not help the students. Shaming them publicly, instead of empathetically helping them, is not an ideal reaction, they say.
Andrew Sesuraj, who had earlier pointed out that the nearly one-and-a-half-year gap negatively influenced the development of socialisation skills of adolescents, adds that this is also the age at which children’s leadership skills take shape. “At this very crucial period, mentoring was absent. While school authorities were concerned about the learning outcomes impacted by the lockdowns, there should have been similar attention paid to preparing students for the break and for the time when normal pre-pandemic procedures were being restored.” Andrew adds that instances of students having trouble adjusting are not limited to government schools but also occur in private schools. However, such videos would not be shared and considered free for social media consumption with the same enthusiasm had they been leaked from private schools where students of far more class and caste-privileged backgrounds study.
“What is clear is that we are failing to address adolescent needs,” says Andrew. “The focus of most schools is just on marks. We fail to train children on life-skills. Private schools at least have extra-curricular activities, such as NCC, where students can hone their leadership abilities. The same scope to prove their leadership is limited in government schools, so they display it elsewhere, badly, on a bus or in a classroom. So, who is at fault here? The children or us? We are failing them, the system is failing them.”
Aarti explains the psychological factors too. “In each developmental phase, there are biological changes in the body. At the adolescent stage, the brain goes through something called the second brain revolution (the first occurs when the individual is a toddler). A lot of structural changes are happening in the brain. There are hormonal influences too. There is also a predilection for not being able to reason out or think through the consequences of specific actions. The ability to do so is called self-regulation,” she says, adding that educational systems that help children self-regulate hardly exist both in private and public schools because the focus is on marks.
“In this developmental phase of their lives, teenagers are able to access the emotional parts of their brain much easier than the thinking parts of the brain. Adolescents need adults to work with them in a process called co-regulation. Co-regulation helps lead to self-regulation. But to do that, teachers have to be emotionally aware and capable of self regulation themselves. Instead, our education systems operate on a reward-and-punishment basis. This approach fails particularly in cases like what we’re discussing,” she points out.
Devaneyan Arasu, a child rights activist, is one of the experts who disagrees with the public perception that there has been a recent rise in incidents of classroom conflicts after schools have reopened. He also sees the spread of these videos as a violation of the Juvenile Justice Act. “Even if the video was shot by the students themselves, it should not be circulated the way it is. Those who truly have a concern about the students, wouldn’t do this. They would have simply made sure that the relevant authorities were notified. Would they do this if it was a child of theirs? Why is it okay if it is someone else’s child?”
The activist adds that the police need to take cognizance of this matter and put a stop to further such videos circulating. He also alleges that several of the videos are old, but that the widespread circulation of the videos have served to misrepresent government school students. “Leading news channels have telecast the videos and described them as ‘out of bounds government school students’. Does this mean that only government school students behave like this? Are all private school students perfect? Or does it mean that each and every government school student is behaving like this?” he argues.
Andrew too says that this whole controversy has only served to malign public perception of government schools where students from economically backward and marginalised groups study. PK Ilaamaaran, the state president for the Tamil Nadu Teachers Association also adds that the spreading of the videos and the ensuing controversy are simply attempts to undermine government schools, spreading panic amongst parents.
“What backgrounds are these students coming from?” asks Illamaaran, who himself studied in government schools, and now, is a teacher at a government higher secondary school in Chennai. “So many of these students are first generation learners. These incidents caught on camera are isolated occurrences, which, as teachers, we will address. That is our job. I’m not condoning the behaviour, but what exactly is the benefit of talking about them on social media like they’re criminals? They’re just children. Have these people passing judgments on them considered the impact on the students’ futures?”
He also points out that the intake numbers in government schools have significantly risen with parents who were sending their children to private matriculation schools, for example, struggling with the demands for tuition fees, bus fees, uniform fees and other expenditures from such schools despite these institutions remaining shut through most of the pandemic. “The news coverage and social media hype will spread panic among parents of government school children, many of whom are, say, daily wage labourers or auto drivers — mainly working-class people. This kind of panic will force them to think their children will not succeed unless they spend money on private schools, adding financial pressure on them,” he observes.