The Heavy Knapsack of Vulnerable Children in Disadvantaged Contexts

All children should be able to enter their classroom and focus on what they are going to see, hear and do, at least for the time they are in school. It should be a child’s basic right, but in fact, not all students have the chance to focus on their learning experience. Indeed, this is a privilege available for some children only, while in many disadvantaged contexts a child’s ability to concentrate, or simply enjoy being in class, may have been undermined even before they say “Good morning” to the teacher (Campbell & al., 2016; Skovdal, 2016; Skovdal & Evans, 2017).

We will here consider the context of marginalised areas where various forms of physical and mental distress and hardships can be extremely severe, particularly for children who have to worry about duties and responsibilities within their household. We will then highlight the need for teachers to be aware of such circumstances, as the whole classroom experience may be altered and hindered by external factors that remain unknown to the teacher, with disheartening repercussions for the child.

Our main references will be three rural, underserved areas located in eastern and southern Africa: Mpumalanga province in South Africa (Maila & Ross, 2018), Siaya County in Western Kenya (Skovdal & Evans, 2017), and an unspecified province in Zimbabwe (Campbell & al., 2016). The physical and social environments of such remote areas, as described in the aforementioned studies, show similar characteristics. They lack adequate infrastructure and health services. People endure impoverished living conditions, precariousness, and anxiety due to insufficient income, which is often earned through farming or low-wage casual work. Unemployment is high, training and job opportunities very limited. Moreover, these communities are disproportionately affected by malaria, HIV, or water-borne diseases. Many vulnerable children living there must face the deprivation and suffering caused by poverty, undernourishment, psychosocial distress, and either their own or their relatives’ temporary or chronic health issues (Campbell & al., 2016; du Plessis & Mestry, 2019; Maila & Ross, 2018; Skovdal & Evans, 2017). As research urges us to address, similar hindering factors also occur in various resource-constrained regions around the globe (Maila & Ross, 2018), to which we may extend the concerns of this article.

Let’s then put ourselves in a teacher’s shoes, get into the class, and look at our pupils’ faces. This might take a while, considering that in a primary school in western Kenya, a teacher has an average of forty-nine faces to look at (Skovdal & Evans, 2017). Does each one of them look fine?

Most of the children participating in the cited research studies (Campbell & al., 2016; Maila & Ross, 2018; Skovdal & Evans, 2017) reported that they had too many duties at home, particularly children from lower-income households, and girls more than boys as they were usually given more caregiving responsibilities. Those pupils were often asked to provide care for younger siblings or sick or elderly relatives. Some of the persons they cared for had been victims of accidents at work, or living with chronic health conditions as HIV or AIDS, which need a daily and committed caregiver. They contributed to their family income through farming or other casual work. They also fetched water, cleaned, cooked, collected firewood, or did other chores.

In fact, such pupils are student workers who may be forced to drop out temporarily, skip school or arrive late when they are overwhelmed by their duties. When the lesson starts, they may feel already tired, sleepy, distressed, and unable to concentrate, being too worried about the people they care for and their extra school tasks. Their families may be unable to meet the costs of education or provide them with resources and support. They are burdened by an invisible but sizable pressure and may lack the energy to apply themselves to the class.

Significantly, “an invisible knapsack” of unearned assets and advantages has been the metaphor imagined by Peggy McIntosh (1989) to materialize white people’s privilege in social contexts. Being invisible, the knapsack of privilege is also “weightless”: their carriers may not even realize, or internalise, that they have been carrying one. However, they benefit from systemic facilitated access to a range of choices and opportunities. Can we imagine, in reverse, what kind of invisible knapsacks do children have to carry from home to school in disadvantaged contexts? Their knapsack is something weighty and mind-bending. They have to carry it every day, and while the teacher talks to them, they cannot just put the knapsack aside and forget about it. Can a teacher realize when their pupils’ behavior is affected by hidden distress, which has perhaps nothing to do with their teaching time? For local teachers or intercultural teachers who work in marginalised areas, it is crucial to realise that their pupils are underprivileged in their chance to focus on their learning time. A teacher looks into the eyes of a young girl who would like to enjoy the class, she wants and tries to; but her mother is bedridden at home, she needs her for medicines and food, or her little siblings have nothing for dinner, and even if she finds some vegetables, what is she going to do the next day? Persistently, these thoughts take her mind out of the classroom, back home, to care for her parents or siblings or relatives, while her body is still at school (Skovdal, 2016). If teachers do not realise this, they easily risk misinterpreting children’s behavior and think that some of them are unresponsive or lazy, while their lack of attention or apparent laziness are actually symptoms of much deeper distress (Skovdal & Evans, 2017).

This also implies that any teaching method or strategy is inevitably undermined, as pupils’ responsiveness, participation and commitment may not be primarily dependent on teachers’ creative ideas and lesson activities, but on destabilising factors coming from outside the classroom. Yet, teachers may have a key role for these vulnerable children. They can see their pupils coming to class with their heavy knapsack, inside which their worries and duties weigh like stones, and stretch out their hands to ease the pressure on their shoulders. When children perceive that their school and teachers care for them, and care about their learning, development, and well-being, they can feel their teacher's support and the bond of school connectedness. These are vital factors of resilience, which can help them cope with social-emotional distress, anxiety, and traumas (Penner & al., 2018). By being that caring teacher, a teacher may embrace a more profound sense of both personal and professional commitment. In the Siaya County schools, Kenya, for instance, teachers were found to be aware of their pupils’ unmet needs and hardships, for which they not only cared about, but they were also willing to go beyond their ordinary duties. They felt the necessity to investigate the reasons for their pupils’ dropouts or difficulties in the classroom and take action to help them coming back to class or moderate their household problems. They also arranged afterschool clubs aiming to empower the skills of orphaned and vulnerable children. Some schools encouraged their pupils to talk with their counseling teachers about any problem, and pupils reported to have received social and emotional support from teachers who had shown them a great deal of empathy and compassion (Skovdal & Evans, 2017).

As we have seen, socio-economic, health, and mental issues in disadvantaged contexts may affect underprivileged children, who cannot escape the burden of their psychological and emotional distress when they get into class and interact with their peers and teachers. The starting point of every single school day, as well as the path of their life’s journey throughout education, may be unevenly steep. Furthermore, having to carry a heavy load on their shoulders, children watch their steps amid everyday struggles, and may not be able to look at the horizon. They are stricken by the dimension of the present and their active role in contributing to social needs. Hence, it gets extremely hard for them to see themselves as learners in becoming and plan their future education (Skovdal & Evans, 2017).

We know that education should constitute children’s pathway to escape poverty and gain everything they need to live healthy and fulfilling lives, as United Nations’ (2020) Sustainable Development Goals 4 (Quality education) and 10 (Reduced inequalities) strongly advocate, but this cannot happen if children do not have the chance to embrace their learning experience. Only when they perceive themselves as active members of the school community (Penner & al., 2018), and their mental and physical energy can shine within the learning environment, they are given the real opportunity to walk along that pathway of hope. Looking at pupils’ faces, it is important to bear in mind that multiple worries about the day before, the present day, or the next, might drag their thoughts away. This is particularly urgent in schools within marginalized areas, where systemic privation cause vulnerable pupils to see any chance of enjoying their learning time as an inaccessible privilege. Furthermore, while this article has focused on underprivileged contexts and vulnerable children, we actually believe this caring approach to be always vital, as in any contexts some pupils might be carrying the load of sorrows and worries that their teachers or educators are unaware of, but they can help to ease with their caring and supportive presence.

References

Campbell, C., L. Andersen, A. Mutsikiwa, C. Madanhire, C. Nyamukapa, and S. Gregson. (2016). “Can Schools Support HIV/AIDS-Affected Children? Exploring the ‘Ethic of Care’ Amongst Rural Zimbabwean Teachers.” PloS ONE 11(1): e0146322.

du Plessis, P., & Mestry, R. (2019). Teachers for rural schools – A challenge for South Africa. South African Journal of Education, 39.

Maila, P., & Ross, E. (2018). Perceptions of disadvantaged rural matriculants regarding factors facilitating and constraining their transition to tertiary education. South African Journal of Education, 38(1).

Penner, F., Sharp, C., Marais, L., & Skinner, D. (2018). School connectedness as psychological resilience factor in children affected by HIV/AIDS. AIDS Care, 30, 34-41.

Skovdal, M. (2016). “It's because they care”: Understanding pathways to classroom concentration problems among HIV-affected children and youth in Western Kenya. AIDS Care, 28 Suppl 2, 42-48.

Skovdal, M., & Evans, R. (2017). The emergence of an ethic of care in rural Kenyan schools? Perspectives of teachers and orphaned and vulnerable pupils. Children’s Geographies, 15(2), 160-176.

United Nations. (2020). 4. Quality education; 10. Reduced inequalities. [United Nations’ official web page]. Retrieved from www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/education.