Abstract
Education is a learnt behaviour, which shapes and moulds the nature of a human being by transforming him/her into a human resource and helps in social progress. Children start learning in the lap of their parents. They are bought up by accumulating the knowledge gained from the interaction with the family members. This interaction varies from one family to another. Even when they start going to an institution for the formal education, home environment leaves an influence on his/her attitude towards education. In addition to institutional influence, proper understanding of the impact of home environment is essential for taking due care in development of human resource. Backwardness of the female students in different hierarchies of the educational sector is a major concern in India as well as in West Bengal since a very long period. In spite of ample efforts to increase the rate of enrolment and to develop the quality of education in both national and state level, the progress in terms of actual involvement in educational activities is not up to the mark in many cases. In the light of this background, a grass-root level study has been conducted to understand the role of home environment on determining the academic involvement of the female students belonging to different hierarchies of tribe-caste continuum in a rural context of Bankura District, West Bengal. It aims to identify the major components of home environment, which determine the level of cohort specific academic involvement in the type of families from different social background. In order to retrieve various perspectives on their home environment, we surveyed female students reading in VIII —XII and belonging to the age group 13 to 18 years. From the micro level analysis, it has been found that caste and tribal identity based disparity as well as family type wise differences in level of academic involvement (LAI) is profound in the study area. Home environment is having a significant positive influence over LAI of female students. Factors like economic status of the family, parents’ educational level, fathers’ occupation, parents’ support for education of their daughters have shown a positive impact over LAI. On the other hand, mothers’ engagement in different works outside the home, time invested by the cohort in household works/day and exposure to domestic violence is hindering LAI significantly in the study area. However, this study fails to find any significant influence of the number of siblings, parents’ support for economic independence as well as mobility of their daughters on actual involvement in academic involvement of adolescent girl students in the concerned area.
Highlights
It is well known that India is characterised by a unique social fabric reflecting the diversity in the existing socio-cultural settings and West Bengal as one of its states, shows no exception
Scheduled Caste category contributes to 16.2 % of Indian population (Census of India, 2011). 8.2 % of the Indian masses consist of the Scheduled Tribe population (Census of India, 2011)
Considering the micro level problems that restrict female education in the study area, the research suggests that only the economic empowerment of socio-economic status will not be sufficient to improve the overall quality of the home environment
Summary
It is well known that India is characterised by a unique social fabric reflecting the diversity in the existing socio-cultural settings and West Bengal as one of its states, shows no exception. As a ‘primary kinship unit and basic social group’ represents the basis of all human ventures and deeds It carries out different aspects of sexual, reproductive, economic, and educational functions (Jha, 1999). Effect of sibling size on children’s educational outcomes may vary in different spatio-temporal contexts but many researches confirm the negative relationship between the sibling size and girl child’s schooling, in developing countries (Li et al, 2014) For instance, as argued by Kandiyoti (1997), bride-price based marriage system in a ‘patrilineal- patrilocal complex’ poses lesser value for daughter’s role in contribution to the household economy in the ‘classic patriarchal society’ of countries like India. Gender role perception in society, priorities for male child than girls and sex segregated norms in household level, higher engagement in household works, regulations for early marriage of girls, can still be considered the major barriers for the equality of development of girls in every social strata (Desai and Krishnaraj, 1990; Bhadra, 1999)
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