Self-identity issues of South Asian young people in Australian schools.

The aim of this study is to ascertain the perceptions of South Asian parents and young people with regard to a range of identity-related issues and education. To obtain a comprehensive and balanced picture, a number of white teachers is also included in the research. A representative sample of students was drawn from three high schools; two located in a city area and the third in a rural area of New South Wales. Eighteen parents and thirty students and sixteen teachers were interviewed to discover their attitudes and perceptions towards: bilingualism and the teaching of community languages, religious orientation, gender issues, identity, prejudice and racism, and acculturation. In addition, seventy-five boys and girls completed an established Acculturation Scale. The responses of the non-manual group are compared with that of the manual group and the implications for the education of South Asian young people are drawn.

Introduction

This research project is part of an ongoing exploration into the identity-related_ issues (dual identity, religion, mother-tongue teaching, family values), acculturation and educational progress of adolescents of South Asian origin in Britain, Canada and the United States. The South Asian young people of the second and third generation in Australia and other western countries face unique problems of social adjustment at school because most of their home values tend to conflict with those of the school. South Asian homes, for instance, tend to emphasise family and kinship solidarity and collectivity, religious outlook and gender role differentiation. Schools in the west, on the other hand, stress the development of `individuality' (autonomy and independence; see Dewey, 1964; Hirst & Peters, 1970), secular outlook and gender equality. Additionally, young people have to face the racial prejudice of their white peers, and even of some teachers, at schools and later when seeking employment and other civic amenities in society at large. Such a situation is likely to make their lives more challenging and problematic compared with those of their white counterparts (Rotheram & Phinney, 1987).

Researchers (Anwar, 1998; Drury, 1991; Ghuman, 1991, 1995; Gibson, 1988; Stopes-Roe & Cochrane, 1990) have found that the young people of South Asian ancestry, with few exceptions, are achieving as well as their white counterparts academically, that they tend to be bilingual (at a spoken level, at any rate), that they describe their personal identities in a `hyphenated way' and respect the core values and traditions of their families. At the same time, the majority of them have acquired the knowledge, language and skills of their respective host societies to make a functional adaptation. However, a small minority of young people, especially girls (Bryant-Waugh & Lask, 1991; Dolan, 1991; Merrill & Owens, 1986), find adolescence a particularly stressful period because of the conflict of values between the South Asian family and school, being in addition to those faced by their white peers (Ghuman, 1999). There has been no published research reported on South Asian young people in Australia. This project, therefore, was devised, first, to find out the perceptions and attitudes of South Asian young people, teachers and parents towards: bilingualism, mother-tongue teaching, religious orientation, gender inequality, personal identities and acculturation, and racism and prejudice.

Methodology

Semi-structured interview 

The two main methods employed for the collection of data were a semi-structured interview and an established Acculturation Scale (Ghuman, 1975). The interview method helps the researcher to explore the issues in depth in an atmosphere of confidence and trust. This technique has been found useful by researchers (Bhachu, 1985a, 1985b; Ghuman, 1991; Rex & Tomlinson, 1979; Verma & Ashworth, 1986) to explore the attitudes and perceptions of South Asian parents, young people and teachers to a variety of issues.

To increase both the reliability and validity of this method of data collection, it is vital to win the full confidence and trust of the respondents. To this end, all the young people, parents and teachers were fully briefed about the aims of the research and its significance in helping to improve the education of South Asian young people. To further enhance the validity of the interviewing procedure, parents (in most cases fathers, although mothers were present on many occasions) were given the option to be interviewed in Punjabi or Hindi or Urdu--the three languages of the respondents. In the event, nearly two-thirds of the interviews were conducted in the parents' mother tongue. Another dimension often stressed by researchers (see Modood, Beishon, & Virdee, 1994) is the importance of the ethnicity of the interviewer in this type of research, namely the interviewer should preferably be from the same ethnic group as the respondents. This researcher fulfils such a criterion quite well as he speaks fluently the above noted languages of the subcontinent.

The interviews were transcribed, and translated where necessary, and the extracts are extensively used to give the reader both the flavour and substance of respondents' perceptions and points of view.

Acculturation Scale

A Likert-type Scale was constructed by Ghuman in 1974 to assess the acculturation of young South Asian boys and girls in Birmingham, England (Ghuman, 1975). The Scale's reliability (Cronbach alpha = 0.82) and validity were established on a large sample of South Asian young people (N = 465; Ghuman, 1991). It was slightly extended by adding another two items and by replacing an item on `school dinners' and was thereafter successfully used in England and Vancouver (Ghuman, 1994, 1997). Its reliability again proved to be high indeed (ranged from 0.84 to 0.88) and it was validated by `extreme group' method (see Burroughs, 1971).

Samples

The permission of the Director of Education of New South Wales was successfully sought and subsequently three schools (two in a city and one in a rural area) were approached with a view to selecting a representative group of students for the administration of a background questionnaire, the `Acculturation Scale', and to conduct semi-structured interviews. Out of 75 students who completed the pen and paper part of the research, 30 students were interviewed. Girls were more interested and eager to participate in the research than boys and hence there is a gender imbalance in the numbers opting for interviews.

The parents in the city were contacted through the schools but the help of the local Gurdwara was sought to approach the parents of students in the rural area. In all, 16 parents and 15 teachers were interviewed. Teachers selected for interview included TESL teachers, educational psychologists, deputy heads and a headmaster. The details of the samples are given in Table 1.

There are several additional points to be made in connection with the samples. First, the parents from the rural area are of Punjabi (Sikh) origin and form approximately a quarter of the town's population (de Leprevanchi, 1984). They mostly own small banana farms (15 to 20 acres), which are intensively cultivated along the same lines as in their `home' state of the Punjab. They have built two Gurdwaras for collective worship and both of these run Sunday schools for the teaching of Punjabi. Although there is a bit of rivalry between the congregations of the two Gurdwaras, they are still closely linked through biraderi (kinship) and family ties.

In contrast, the professional parents consist typically of university lecturers, engineers and doctors, who have emigrated in response to the Australian drive to attract intending migrants with `scarcity' skills. The professionals appear to be a migratory elite, in both geographical and social senses, who nurture very high aspirations and desire `quality' education for their children. This observation is validated by the fact that nearly two-thirds of the professional students come from a selective high school. The schools in the study do not offer any overt policy statement on multicultural education but, in the rural school, a few activities are organised to acknowledge the cultural heritage of the Punjabis.

Discussion

The results of the research are reported on a thematic basis, with a brief discussion of the findings in relation to previous research. In the concluding part of the paper, various strands of the inquiry will be knit together to present an emerging picture of South Asian young people's predicament and its likely implications for their education. The convention of giving fictitious names to interviewees is observed in this paper.

From Table 2, it follows that students are in favour of retaining their community languages, although there is some variation between the two groups. The interesting finding is that most of them admit to speaking `a mixture' of two languages, English and their mother tongue. Does this imply that the majority are bilingual? The interview data shed further light on this question, for the majority of students admitted that when they are talking to their siblings and friends they use mostly English but when talking to their parents they speak in their community language. A Hindu girl (daughter of a university lecturer) gave her views:

   Researcher: Can you read and write or only speak Hindi?

   Simita: Only speak, but I am planning on reading and writing as soon as
   Year 12 finishes, I'm planning on learning; I want to learn.

   Researcher: Do you speak any other foreign language apart from English,
   like French and German?

   Simita: I used to do German for a while, but I dropped it a couple of years
ago.

The majority of the young people admitted in the interviews that, although they can speak their family language, they cannot read nor write it. Although the farmers' group expresses stronger desire (see Table 2) to learn Punjabi, it was the youngsters from the professional background who could read and write in their community language and the ones who expressed their willingness to learn it at some stage. As expected from previous research (Bhachu, 1985a, 1985b), parents expressed a variety of views on the learning of English and their community languages. A farmer, who holds a degree in business administration, gave his views:

   Researcher: What language do your kids speak?

   Amrik: Kids speak English and Punjabi.

   Researcher: Your kids learn English at school but what about Punjabi?

   Amrik: Yes, they learn English at school and there's Punjabi teaching at
   the Gurdwara, but not too many children go there.

   Researcher: What about your kids? Are they learning Punjabi?

   Amrik: My kids don't learn, no. It's hard enough to learn one language,
   than grasp two. It's good if you can do it but it is difficult ... they
   know how to speak it, but not read and write. They are young minds, there's
   a lot of things that go on.

(His 14-year-old son, who attends the local high school, walked in during the interview and I asked him what language does he speak with his best friend. He replied: `Sometimes Indian, sometimes Australian' [sic].

Nearly half the parents argued along this line and seemed to support an archaic `balloon' theory of mind (cognitive capacity), namely, the brain has a limited capacity for processing, storing and retrieval of incoming information and therefore it is best to concentrate on the core curriculum (see Baker, 1995; Belling; 1995). Such an attitude on the part of parents is reminiscent of the Welsh situation in the fifties where both parents and teachers believed that the learning and teaching of Welsh would impede the academic progress of students (Williams, 1962). Williams argues that such an attitude had been deeply ingrained in the former colonial people and the Celtic communities in the United Kingdom--the latter have nearly lost their ancestral languages.

An educational psychologist was concerned about the literacy level of Punjabi students and was going to give them a standardised test to make an objective assessment. There is only one TESL teacher in the rural school and she felt that some extra help would definitely improve the Punjabi students' written English. None of these problems was mentioned by the students or their teachers in the city schools.

In the two city schools, the intake of South Asian students is very small (less than 12) and they speak a variety of languages. Therefore, it was thought that the exploration of issues relating to the teaching and learning of mother tongue within the school curriculum is not going to be fruitful, as there are five to six languages to cater for a small number of students. In contrast, in the rural school there is a significant presence of Punjabi speaking students and the matter of teaching of Punjabi was worth exploring with teachers and students. A teacher of English was asked his opinion on the status and the teaching of Punjabi at the rural school. He gave a very perceptive answer:

   I've always thought there's something screwy about working at a school
   which is unique in this country in that we have a large percentage of our
   students coming from one specific background (meaning Punjabi speaking) and
   we do not include their language in the school curriculum ... I believe we
   have a golden opportunity ... next time we advertise for a language teacher
   we should look for competency in Punjabi.

An interesting episode, which is germane to the debate on the teaching of community languages, was brought to light in a group discussion. A few months prior to the undertaking of this research (March 1998), the former principal of the school banned the speaking of Punjabi in the school, which seemed to have upset many Punjabi students. I explored this question with both the parents and teachers. The teachers on the whole appeared to be sympathetic towards the learning and teaching of Punjabi within the curriculum. However, they argued that some students have been making derogatory and cynical remarks in Punjabi about white students and teachers, thus causing ill will and inter-ethnic tension in the school. They went on to argue that in this they have the support of the Punjabi parents, which was later confirmed in my interviews with parents.

The acting principal of the high school supported the teaching of Punjabi in the school and, likewise, other languages (e.g. Japanese, Indonesian and French). However, the real difficulty lies in recruiting qualified teachers of Punjabi, which can easily' be overcome by an exchange program of teachers with schools in India.

Religious orientation

As religion plays an important part in the formation of the personal and social identities of young people of South Asian ancestry (Modood et al., 1994), it was thought important to investigate this topic with both students and parents. The responses of students are given in Table 3.

From Table 3, it is clear that the farmers' group is more religiously orientated compared with the professionals, but that they are not in favour of learning `something about Christianity'. The commitment of the farmers' boys and girls to their own religion is confirmed by my personal observations when I visited the Gurdwara three times in a fortnight to interview parents. During Sunday services I saw several of the high school students. The girls wore traditional Punjabi clothes (Salwar and Kameez) but the boys were in European clothes. With girls, it was an amazing transformation: their manner and deportment (modesty, deferring to parents, etc.) were in contrast to those at school, where they appear to be confident and independent minded. The following comments of a student are typical:

   Researcher: Do your parents want you to be more of a pucka Sikh? Say you
   start smoking or something like that?

   Gurrinder: I would never do it, my parents would kill me [sic]!

The Sikh community in the town is very anxious that their children should follow in their footsteps and continue to build their lives around the Gurdwara. But there are problems as I learnt from the responses of parents and from a video called Temple on the hill given to me by the school librarian. An extract from an interview with a whole family (mother, father and a daughter) should be of interest.

   Researcher: So what about Sikh religion? Did you learn anything from the
   family?

   Balwinder: Not really, my dad didn't use to go, he didn't have time after
   doing the farming jobs.

   Father: A lot of people came to the Gurdwara to make money and not to take
   its work seriously. Our kids do not understand Punjabi that well, therefore
   they don't understand the teachings of the Gurus.

   Mother: Here Giani (Punjabi scholar) H ... came and he taught our children
   in English the Sikh prayers of Japji Sahib, first five Slokas. Children
   listened to him with great interest.

   Father: The new Bhai (priest) has come straight from a Punjabi village and
   does not speak any English. A young man has to translate his
   preaching--which puts the kids off. And this is a big problem.

The professional parents felt confident enough to teach their family religion themselves and were of the opinion that schools should get on with the task of teaching the school curriculum. The Hindu parents in the study had, for instance, made small shrines (containing Laksmi, Hanuman, Rama and Krishna) in their homes where daily morning and afternoon prayers are said and it is normal to go to a nearby mandir at the weekends. Unlike the farmers, they do not seem to feel threatened by the Australian way of life.

Gender issues

The literature on this topic is extensive (Taylor & Hegarty, 1985; Wade & Souter, 1991) and is based mainly on the research conducted in the United Kingdom. Therefore, a considerable amount of effort was spent to find out the views and opinions of students, their parents and teachers on this topic. The responses of students to gender issues are given in Table 4.

The boys and girls differ significantly on their attitudes to women's role in the family. Girls, as expected, are more in favour of gender equality than boys. The boys from the farming group are the most orthodox in their views compared with girls and boys from the professional group and even with those of the girls from their own group. As anticipated the boys and girls of the professional group are more in favour of gender equality than their counterparts in the farmer group.

A selection of views is given. An educational psychologist identified the difficulties of girls:

      There are a lot of issues ... In general terms the girls do feel a
   little isolated from the mainstream girls. One of them, for instance, was
   quite concerned when she found herself in a health (PD/PE) class and being
   the only Sikh girl there. She felt terrible--she wouldn't have anybody to
   share her values and beliefs, because in health they talk about things like
   sexuality and relationships ...

Most of the girls from the farming families admitted to this difficulty:

   Researcher: You mentioned some special concerns of Sikh girls?

   Amita: We can't talk to Australians the way we talk to each other.

   Researcher: Why not?

   Sunita: They talk about their mothers and fathers in such a bad way. And
   then what are you doing tonight? Talk about the parties and boy friends ...
   Go to the beach tomorrow, stuff like that.

   Kimin: We do not feel comfortable in mixed swimming and PE lessons ...
   white girls like this sort of thing.

This theme was developed further by an educational psychologist attached to the school:

   I hear the girls' side of things, I don't hear the boys' side of things. I
   certainly understand that their virginity is really an important thing.
   They don't seem to have a problem with that either, they have accepted that
   ... I think that the accepted thing is that they will continue their
   education and become as qualified as possible. My understanding is that
   their marriage value depends a lot on how educated they are, etc. ... They
   are really highly motivated to finish school and to become an accountant!

Most of the girls from the farming families expressed the grievance that boys generally enjoy more freedom and choice which, incidentally, is also the case in the United Kingdom, Canada, United States and India (Drury, 1991; Ghuman, 1999). Furthermore, they were of the opinion that a lot of boys do not work hard at school because `they know they are going to inherit the banana farms; therefore, we are under a lot of pressure from parents to do well at school and to "carry" the family traditions and izzat'.

However, a teacher of English conceded:

   With some considerable justice the Sikh people can look at us and say: what
   good has feminism done you?. You guys are not even sure how much of it you
   want yet, and then there is homosexuality ... All of these things, our
   society is at odds with itself and these guys can at least say: look we
   have this coherent, cohesive set up.

The farmer parents stressed their concerns regarding the influence of extracurricular activities such as school clubs and outings, swimming and games upon the personal development (negative in their view) of girls. They were fearful that their girls might drift away from the familial cultural fold. A farmer opined:

   Maybe we are an older generation but we have our beliefs ... no school in
   India holds a disco. They hold discos because it's part of their culture
   ... Maybe they should learn something from our culture.

From the analysis of girls' responses, it emerges that they are trying desperately to find some middle way--a compromise--between their traditions and the Australian way of life. Many of them commented that good school achievement followed by university qualifications would bring them a degree of independence from their parents. The less able girls, however, were somewhat pessimistic: `What is the point of mixing with Australians? When we get married we will be asked to speak Indian [sic] with our in-laws and follow our ways.'

None of the professional parents and girls expressed any anxiety over these matters. Nearly all the mothers in the professional group had attended university or colleges of higher education and were pursuing their own careers. Unlike the mothers from the farming families, they had a fair say in their arranged marriages (Sethi, 1990) and as a result are flexible on this and other issues. In sum, professional mothers are proving to be good role models for their daughters.

Identity

Although there are no direct questions on the Scale about the nature of the identity of young people, there are items which are closely connected to this topic. In Table 5 the responses are presented.

There are two clear inferences to be drawn from Table 5. First, the group as a whole does not want to lose its identity by changing names and readily adopting other Australian customs and traditions. Secondly, and predictably, the professional group is more favourable to acculturation than the farmer group. Now we turn to students' and parents' responses.

   Researcher: Do you feel fully Australian?

   Mohinder: I'm Australian because I was born here ... I'm Australian Indian.

   Researcher: That's the way you see it?

   Mohinder: I can't see myself as an Indian because I was born in Australia
   and have Indian heritage, so I see myself as I say an Australian Indian.

This notion of a `hyphenated' identity came up again and again. Most of the young people were of the opinion that this describes how they are constructing their identities and only a few would like to retain their parents' identities, for example, Indian. But the interesting point is that the Punjabi community is still generally referred to as `the Indians' by the local white population both in cities and in rural areas (see de Lepravanchi, 1984) although this does not seem to have affected the views of the students, many of whom consider themselves to be Indo-Australian.

Racism and prejudice

A month or so before this research was conducted in the rural school, there was a major fight between a white boy and a couple of Punjabi boys over name-calling and racist taunting, which had soured the inter-ethnic relations in the school. There are no items on the Scale which are meant to assess students' attitudes on this topic. But this issue was explored in the interviews. An extract gives an insight into their views:

   Researcher: In the school, have you felt any racism from other kids?

   Avtar: Yes, we often get it.

   Researcher: What forms does it take?

   Avtar: Verbal, name-calling.

   Researcher: What do you do about it?

   Avtar: We usually retaliate, call names back and in some cases we've had
   physical ...

   Researcher: I have heard of a couple of nasty incidents but you don't seem
   to feel too worried about them?

   Avtar: ... because they're not happy [meaning white kids], that's why
   they're dishing it out to us, and I just learnt to accept that, just laugh
   at them ... the teachers have told us that some of the white kids are
   jealous of our background; all the farms we have, jewellery we wear and the
   big cars.

Several Punjabi parents and teachers pointed out that the unemployment rate among whites is very high (nearly 25%) and that this has resulted in resentment of, and hostility towards, the material success of the Punjabi community. Some local whites, according to one of the teachers at school, have accused the Punjabis of growing dope in their banana farms. Bullivant's (1987) comments in the concluding chapter of his monograph are relevant:

   It would further appear that a number of British migrant-settler and
   Anglo-Australian parents and students, particularly from lower-SES areas
   encountered in the case studies, chose to shift the blame for their own
   inadequacies on to those from NES and particularly Asian backgrounds ...
   (pp. 188-189)

Most of the youngsters in the interviews felt that the teaching staff is quite fair in dealing with their complaints about racial incidents. However, a few students, and two teachers, in the interviews felt that there are some teachers who are not fully committed to equality and fairness. Overall, from the analysis of the interviews and my ten-day observations of the Punjabi students in the school, it became clear that the racial prejudice seems to have only a minimal effect on their personal and academic development and upon their overall satisfaction with school life. Although the school does not keep records of achievement on `ethnic basis', the teachers thought the scholastic achievement of Punjabis to be on a par with that of the white students. And none of the parents expressed anxiety over this matter or on prejudice and racism in the school.

The experiences of the professional group are in contrast to those of the farmers: not a single student felt there to be any problem of racist name-calling or bullying at their school. But several said that they had suffered racist name-calling at their primary schools. However, according to an educational psychologist, some professional children in selective schools get stressed because of very `high expectations' of their parents. She has dealt with quite a few South Asian young people who were suffering from acute anxiety and depression.

Conclusions

The findings of this small-scale project lead us to some very optimistic, albeit tentative, conclusions regarding the personal development and educational experiences of South Asian young people in Australia. It is paradoxical that, although most of the young people express a favourable attitude to the learning of their ancestral language, only a small number actually do learn it. Some even choose to learn another language (e.g. French) for pragmatic reasons. In England, a similar finding is reported by Modood et al. (1994). However, adherence to religion is a more serious commitment and is evident with this sample of boys and girls. Religion, then, is the mainstay of their identity and the Gurdwara is a focal point where Sikh young people find an expression and reinforcement of their identities. For the boys and girls of other faiths, on the other hand, home is the place for practising their religion and the temple plays a less significant role.

Regrettably, sexism is still a part of the Punjabi family traditions and a way of life and it causes a lot of distress and resentment among many girls. Teachers in the rural school are very sympathetic to the girls' predicament but do not wish to upset the sensibilities of the Punjabi parents, who have `fossilised' the Punjabi culture of some 30 years ago. Such a predicament also pertains to the Greek and Turkish communities in Melbourne (see Bullivant, 1989, p. 91). It thus follows that teachers have the difficult task of helping the South Asian girls to develop their full academic and personal potential without unduly upsetting the sensibilities of parents. And this seems to be a point of contention between the Punjabi parents and the teachers at school. In the researcher's opinion, Punjabi parents have to change their outlook to accommodate to the just demands of their daughters. Even `back at home' there have been many social and religious changes brought about by the effect of modern communications, especially TV. Many villagers in the Punjab now sport satellite dishes and the like to receive transmissions from the western media. The middle-class girls, on the other hand, tend to have more understanding parents, who readily appreciate the predicament of living in two cultures (Sethi, 1990). Therefore they face fewer problems in coming to terms with their biculturalism.

There are a few other implications which flow from this study for the education of South Asian young people. Teachers may need professional development to assist and support them in their efforts to accept their students' biculturalism and respect their wish to use their ancestral languages (mother tongue in many cases) in school. Given the constraints of resources, where possible the teaching of community languages may be included in the school curriculum and such a policy should be negotiated in order to win the confidence of both students and parents. As there is a scarcity of qualified Punjabi teachers in Australia, an exchange scheme of Punjabi teachers from India could be of immense value in implementing such a policy, as is the case with the teaching of French in British schools.

Furthermore, the employment of a home-school link teacher or social worker is likely to prove effective in removing misunderstandings and promoting a meaningful dialogue between home and school. For instance, teachers, students, and parents fully praised the former second-generation `Australian-Punjabi' home-school social worker (who lost her position due to financial cuts), who significantly improved the relations between the Punjabi community and the high school by organising a variety of social and cultural activities. Such steps are likely to enhance the self-image of students and are very likely to reduce tension between home and school (see Baker, 1998), and thereby improve the social adjustment and education of Punjabi students. Such a policy was advocated by the writer in 1975 (Ghuman, 1975) and subsequently supported by the Swann Report (Committee of Inquiry, 1985) and has been implemented to good effect by many schools in England and Wales.

It has been noted by researchers (Bhachu 1985a, 1985b; Verma & Ashworth, 1986--and a TESL teacher in the present research) that many Punjabi students--whose first language is not English--are handicapped by their written English in that they find it difficult to understand and to express themselves when dealing with abstract concepts in language-based subjects (i.e. difficulty in operating at Piaget's formal stage of thinking, see Meadows, 1993). Therefore, if schools were to find resources to appoint a TESL teacher to provide extra help to Punjabi students with their written English, it is likely to improve their scholastic achievement significantly.

Keywords

acculturation

biculturalism

family school relationships

native language teaching

religion

sex differences

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Professor Paul Ghuman is Head of Education, The University of Wales, Old College, King Street, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY232, AX, Wales. Email: asg@aber:ac.uk