It is not uncommon to read news articles about parents being turned away by institutions which refuse to accommodate a child who has ‘special’ needs, usually citing a lack of infrastructure and appropriate support. These children are framed as potential ‘problems’ that the institution is not equipped to ‘handle.’
The troubling label of the ‘problem child’, typically assigned to those who exhibit ‘behavioural issues’ and are deemed to be a threat to the maintaining of order in the classroom, reveals a fundamental disorder in the Indian schooling system.
It is a sweeping category that, more often than not, extends to students who are neurodiverse and/or disabled in less easily observable ways and are thus unable to meet the standards of mandated classroom behaviour.
One may take, for instance, some of the expectations that have been naturalised as ‘good’ classroom conduct – being attentive, getting good grades, being articulate, punctual and productive, showing an active interest in lessons, adequately internalising social norms such as knowing when to speak and sitting still during lessons.
Deviations from these norms typically invite correction through punitive means. Through repeated, habitual association with punishment and humiliation, such ‘deviant’ behaviours are marked as unacceptable, shameful and wrong, and the child who exhibits these behaviours is marked as a ‘problem’.
In a classroom premised upon such expectations of conformity, what happens to those who fail to live up to a standard defined at the expense of neurodivergent and ‘mentally and physically unfit’ bodies? What, we must ask, becomes of the child who may be incapable of performing these behaviours – the child who has ADHD, or is on the autism spectrum, or is socially anxious or depressed, or suffers from chronic pain or struggles with undiagnosed learning disabilities/difficulties such as dyslexia, dysgraphia or dyscalculia?
Neurodiversity is a non-pathologised term coined by activist and sociologist Judy Singer to denote variations in the human brain which affect the way one thinks, acts or perceives the world, such that there can be no ‘standard’ or ‘correct’ way of thinking, learning, and acting. Those who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, or are autistic, or have learning disabilities, Tourette Syndrome, and/or some other “neurological or developmental conditions” may choose to use the label ‘neurodivergent’ to describe themselves. The neurodiversity model encourages the acceptance of diversity and difference in all people.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
However, very often, expressions of neurodivergence in the Indian classroom are read as instances of the child ‘acting out.’ The ‘taming’ of the problem child becomes a matter of ‘rectifying’ the child. By forcing the ‘deviant’ child to conform to institutional norms via public shaming, branding and/or punitive correction, institutions nurture tools of control which not only promote discourses valuing conformity and sameness but also validate various invisibilised exclusionary practices.
Despite the legal protections granted to people with disabilities in India, especially under the Right for Persons with Disabilities Act (2016), the very construction of disability in legal and political discourses is such that it excludes those who cannot ‘prove’ a visible, medically and professionally-diagnosed disability.
Othering of the ‘problem child’
The troubling quantification of ‘benchmark disabilities’ allows a ‘competent authority’ to ascertain whether a body is ‘disabled enough’ to be allowed to avail of certain affirmative measures. Furthermore, the constitution determines which bodies are ‘recognised’ as being disabled, and excludes certain presentations of neurological differences from its limited list of disabilities. Should a person be unable to conform to expectations of normativity for reasons pertaining to non-visible or non-physical disabilities and/or expressions of neurodivergence, their non-conformity may easily be read mark of wilful and deliberate deviance. They may then become defined as ‘problems’ that must be censured, corrected, or even eradicated when they fail to reproduce normative behaviours in institutional settings.
Even on the rare occasion that the problem child’s ‘acting out’ is framed not as wilful disobedience but as the effect of some maladjustment, ‘disorder’, or psychological issue, the usual response from the institution is either to ostracise the child, or to recommend that they be placed elsewhere in a ‘special school.’
In each of these cases, the child becomes the site of the ‘problem’ such that it is more acceptable to diagnose their ‘deviance’ as a symptom of a neurological disorder, rather than a disorder in the very structure of the institution itself.
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Institutional measures purporting to make children ‘fit’ for society are so routine that the violence implicit in their coercive functioning goes undetected. Such measures include the construction of classrooms as highly-surveilled spaces within which the movement of each child is limited and highly regulated; the grade-based ranking system which classifies students into categories of good and bad; or the delineation of spaces to which the deviant, misbehaving body may be banished for their failure to comply.
Various methods of surveillance, ranging from the more obvious CCTVs to the very layout of a classroom (which allows the authority figure to constantly inspect each child) or the appointment of student enforcers as ‘monitors’ to delegate the enforcement of discipline, all ensure the upholding of a rigid, exclusionary model of schooling. It is necessary to broaden our understanding of punishment to include such methods as branding a child as a ‘bad’ student, or marking them as a ‘lost cause.’
If the ‘problem child’ is caught performing badly in a system already unfairly stacked against them, their academic and/or behavioural record is easily read as confirmation of deviance and disobedience, inevitably causing antisocial behaviour and academic failure.
Need for institutional change
We must acknowledge the role played by institutions in shaping, enabling, and preserving methods that reflect and reproduce various inequalities. We must also take into account those practices, aside from explicitly coercive ones, which condition individuals to unquestioningly internalise these unequal relations.
Thus, the teacher who does not hesitate to punish a fidgety child by binding their hands, or take aside a child from a poorer economic background for questioning in a case of misplaced class funds, or sentence an inattentive learner to an hour outside the classroom where the shameful consequences of their deviance may be put on display – are all operating according to a collective sense reinforced by institutional codes, which encourages certain exclusionary attitudes, beliefs and gestures.
Calling for a design that makes ‘special accommodations’ for particular forms of neurodiversity or for particular disabilities is insufficient, as it often fails to accommodate all forms of difference. Often, those with ‘invisible’ disabilities are conditioned and forced to hide or overcompensate so as to protect their prospects in the academic world.
The Indian law has not yet made sufficient provisions so they may claim a legal identity for themselves as a disabled person in need of accommodations. Furthermore, the very ethos of academic work involves commitments that are already, at the very outset, stacked against certain ‘dysfunctional’ or ‘unfit’ bodies.
It is vital to understand that the concept of inclusivity on which measures such as ‘inclusive education’ are based remains flawed at its very core so long as it translates to making a few ‘special’ accommodations for those who ‘deviate’ from the typical standard.
What we need is a change at the most fundamental levels so that difference may come to be understood as the norm, rather than the occasional, unruly, or problematic exception.
Sayantani Mukhopadhyay is assistant professor, Department of English, St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous).