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Where Nerds Are Normal

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Where Nerds Are Normal Where Nerds Are Normal: Peer Relationships in Six Indian High Schools by Murray Milner, Jr. Senior Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and Professor Emeritus of Sociology University or Virginia [email protected] INTRODUCTORY NOTE: Why the material is being made available in this form. In early 2007 I had a Fulbright Fellowship to India and spent the first three months of that time as a visiting scholar in the Sociology Department of the Delhi School of Economics. Shortly after arriving I asked a group of graduate students whether any of them would be interested in participating in a study of Indian high schools that roughly paralleled the study I had done of American high schools as reported in Geeks, Freaks, and Cool Kids (Routledge 2004). Several expressed interest. I then approached Prof. Meenakshi Thapan, then head of the department, to see whether the department had any objections to such a project and asked whether she might be interested in joining the project since she had published material about Indian schools. She agreed to participate and played an important role in supervising the students doing fieldwork and provided funding to some of the graduate fieldworkers, though I was not privy to the details of these payments. My fellowship called for me to move from Delhi to St. Edmund’s College in Shillong when their term began late in the spring. St. Edmund’s is associated with North- Eastern Hill University. I organized a similar data collection project there using undergraduate students as fieldworkers. Fieldworkers made observations and wrote up fieldnotes that were posted on a University of Virginia private website. (For the Delhi team this made each other’s fieldwork notes available to one another.) It was my understanding that Prof. Thapan and I could draw on all of the data and that each graduate student fieldworker could use the data they had collected. Prof. Thapan and I agreed to attempt to co-author a monograph drawing on all the data. 1 ©Murray Milner, Jr. 2017 After returning to the U.S., I spent the better part of two years analyzing the data and writing a narrative about each school studied. I sent drafted material to Prof. Thapan and the relevant student fieldworker as each chapter was written requesting their comments and criticisms—and encouraged Prof. Thapan to take responsibility for drafting some of the chapters. She always responded by encouraging me to continue, but giving little or no specific feedback. During this period our two families had developed very friendly relationship. We visited in each other’s homes both in India and the U.S. My wife and Prof. Thapan described themselves as “soul mates.” After I completed a full draft, I insisted that Prof. Thapan respond in detail to the draft. While she was in Paris for several months she did provide chapter by chapter comments. In my opinion her interpretation of a significant portion of the data was quite different from mine. As we exchanged e-mails about this her tone became increasingly hostile. I reached the conclusion that we could not fruitfully co-author material. I was disappointed, but did not attribute ill-will to either of us knowing that good and honest scholars often disagree about how to interpret data. I wrote saying that I was withdrawing from the project and that she could use the manuscript and the data as she saw fit, but that I reserved the right to write an article or two drawing on the data. She replied in an accusatory and bitter tone that my wife and I found shocking. Communication ceased. In 2013 I published an article in Sociology of Education drawing on data from both the Delhi project and the Shillong project in which Prof. Thapan played no role. I explicitly acknowledged that Prof. Thapan, Maitrayee Deka, and Pamposh Raina had played an important role in collecting the Delhi data. I received a vitriolic e-mail in effect accusing me of stealing the data without the permission of those who had collected it. I responded pointing out that I would have no reason to have started the project, much less spend two years writing a manuscript if I did not have a right to use the data. The version of the manuscript below is to the best of my memory and my records the version I wrote before I received or used any of Prof. Thapan’s comments—in order to avoid other accusations of plagiarism. It is clearly a “first draft” which I would have refined both analytically and stylistically if I had published this material as a book. A caveat is appropriate. I am writing this introduction in October of 2017, more than ten years after the events recounted above. It could be that my memory is faulty about some of the details, but I am confident that the key thrust of the description is accurate. 2 ©Murray Milner, Jr. 2017 I am making this material available in this form because, however imperfect the manuscript is, it provides useful and important data for those interested in comparative education and youth peer cultures. Prologue UTTARNAGAR GOVERNMENT SCHOOL IN DELHI During the morning assembly the principal says: November is a month of activities and holidays—sports, election and other [things]. But [students] should keep up their studies. One will now hear all the campaigning and fuss about the election. Many of your parents and relatives will go there, but your duty right now is to study. So you should remember that the politicians are here [in pursuit of] their OWN gains, so do not drift away towards all these issues . * * * Fieldworker: “I wanted to know what subjects they liked to study. The girl replied that math was her favorite. [M]any expressed their [agreement]. I asked why they like it . [They] replied that it was not because they liked the teacher, but because the teaching was good.” ST. MARKS SCHOOL IN NORTHEAST INDIA Five Hindu Bengali boys: “Said [they were] not interested in having girl friends because cannot concentrate on studies . Said they wanted to do research when they went to college. Care about marks and their future profession.” * * * 3 ©Murray Milner, Jr. 2017 Six class 12 girls: “Hang out together at school and usually have lunch together. Rarely hang out after school because ‘we are all science students and we have to concentrate more with our studies.’” * * * Two Bengali girls, eventually joined by four Nepali girls: “All made good marks and very concerned about this. Wanted to become Chartered Accountants or M.B.A.’s and make their parents proud.” * * * Four girls from different cultural background: Described themselves as “fun loving” and fashion conscious, but: “Exams very important to them. There was competition among them, but it did not hamper their friendship.” RISHI VALLEY SCHOOL IN SOUTH INDIA ”I sat in prep [study hall] for a while,” reports the fieldworker. “The students were studying quietly on their own. Occasionally someone might go out to drink water or use the toilet or borrow stationery, but by and large there was no movement within the class itself. People were intent on their work.” * * * Later the conversation shifted to marks and I came to know that Abhinand had topped the 9th final exams with ninety-one percent. He was modest about this. He said, “In Rishi Valley School this was the highest, but if I had been in St. Mary’s [in Mumbai] I would have been 31st. They count marks up to three decimal points! . .” RAMPURA SCHOOL IN DELHI “Whenever I would be chitchatting in any of these classes there would be a few 4 ©Murray Milner, Jr. 2017 students plying over their notebooks and solving sums. The school gives lot of assignments, apart from that they have [home]work . from their . coaching centers . “They were quite a focused lot and their life seemed to revolve around school and coaching classes.” * * * The school has maximum students in the science stream in the higher classes, followed by commerce and humanities. Humanities in fact had a single section as compared to six sections for the science stream. As I went to the senior classes with board examinations round the corner, students were pretty serious about their studies. One thing that was unanimous was that most of them want to opt for engineering after their [class] twelve boards. 5 ©Murray Milner, Jr. 2017 Introduction This is a book about secondary schools in India. It looks at relatively elite schools, though these range from very high prestige schools to those whose reputation is strictly local. It includes government schools and non-government schools operated by various charitable trusts. Schools like these are the source of most of India’s expanding middle classes; this expansion is what has so transformed Indian society in the beginning decades of the twenty-first century. This is also the type of schools from which much of the next generation of Indian’s leaders will emerge. A primary focus of this book is on student culture and the informal peer relationships. The latter are both the source and the result of this culture. The first key task of this book is to provide a better description of these student relationships and cultures than is currently available in the social science literature. A second task is to show how the structure of secondary schools and the school cultures that emerge create a set of disciplinary structures that affect not only secondary school students, but also the broader society. The third key task is to explain variation: similarities and differences in peer relations and student culture within India and between India and the U.S.
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