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Since the Curfew Paper (May 15, 1973), we have consciously
distinguished between programs in the Middle East designed to improve
the workings of social institutions and those aimed at the modernization
of individuals. The latter
encompassed work in childrearing and the cultural development of women,
Arabic language teaching, psycho-linguistics (especially on how children
learn) and science and mathematics education. The former category included programs in the social sciences,
management, agriculture, law, population and the environment.
We have begun to realize, however, that much of our work aimed at
individual modernization is hampered by our inadequate understanding of
the nature of the phenomenon itself. The modernization of individuals is clearly a process that deeply
affects the underlying attitudes, values and beliefs of a human being.
By organizing our work functionally, we in the Foundation have
assumed implicitly that individual modernization occurs in the context
of work or training in the modern sector of society. Certainly, this is the
case. In agriculture, it has been demonstrated that to overcome initial
resistance to changing farming practices, a new system must promise at
least a 30 % increase in yield. But
after that threshold has once been crossed, the resistance is lower to
subsequent innovations. Similarly,
Inkeles and others have shown that some attitudes and values change in
the modern direction from employment
in factories.
Formal education directly seeks to prepare children for life in
the modern world, but generally it is more concerned with transmitting
information than with altering attitudes, beliefs and values as such. Could it do a better job of preparing children for modern life if
it addressed these deeper elements of personality more directly?
Is enough known about the process of individual modernization to
permit them to be dealt with effectively in education?
Are there ways to short-cut the modernization process by seeking
to change attitudes, values and beliefs outside the modern productive
and education systems of society? Is
the case for attention to these factors strong enough, and the
Foundation's ability to work on them clear enough, for us to shift
resources from our already strained commitments to attack individual
modernization more directly?
I believe each of these questions merits an affirmative answer.
Education
In education we and others in the business have concentrated on
designing systems to transfer the informational content of western
education to the children of developing countries. Dissatisfaction with the results has led to a shift in
concentration of donor effort gradually downward from the universities
through secondary to primary levels and now, with Coombs, to non-formal
mechanisms in addition to the formal. This shift of focus seems to me to be going in the right
direction but the process has continued to the point where we must begin
to question whether our original objectives of transferring
informational content are really adequate.
If one approaches the development problem from a somewhat
different perspective, and asks what behavioral changes are required for
individuals from traditional cultures to function effectively in modern
society, we may find that our educational objectives have been much too
narrow. The catalog of necessary behavioral changes is not complete,
but it seems that rather radical changes in ability and perspective are
involved. Observations
based on western patterns of development would indicate that changes in
time perspective, ability to defer gratification and thus to plan and to
save, a heightened sense of individual responsibility, a broadened
awareness of human potential, and hence ability to accommodate ambiguity
and change, and an expanded domain of rationality at the expense of the
supernatural, are all elements of individual modernization. If this is true, the process has much to do with changes of
underlying attitudes, beliefs and values.
This does not mean that information and skills are unrelated to
modernization, but one would guess that once underlying attitudes,
beliefs and values become modernized, the acquisition of information and
skills is a relatively simple process. Even if one accepts this analysis, a number of very difficult
questions arises concerning the nature of the attitudes, beliefs and
values which need to be changed and the methods by which this can be
brought about, but let us defer considering these questions in order to
consider individual rnodernization in respect to the population
programs.
Population
I left Cali with great respect for the quality of our population
program staff and for their knowledge of the current state of research
in reproductive sciences, policy-oriented social sciences related to
fertility, and family planning programs. Nevertheless, I came away with the nagging suspicion that these
activities can have but modest impact on the overall world fertility
rate. There are doubts
about the ability of government policies of either a pro- or
anti-natalist bias to seriously affect the growth rate. These are compounded by doubts that social science research has
much influence on government policies. Furthermore,
there are doubts that even well managed family planning programs or
vastly improved contraceptives will have much impact on fertility,
except in those areas where families are seriously trying to lower their
fertility. The suspicion
remains that in many developing countries, if not most, family fertility
objectives are higher than is healthy for the societies in which they
live, or for themselves as individuals.
Simon Kuznets is fond of pointing out, on the basis of a rigorous
analysis of most of the world's knowledge of demographic trends, that
when in history people decided they wanted to limit their populations,
as happened in Tokugawa, Japan and in 18th and 19th century France, they
did so whether contraceptive technology was available to them or not. Moreover, they did so whether the government wanted them to or
not. The question remains,
why did these populations decide they wanted to limit the number of
their offspring?
Conversely, why don't more of the people suffering in poverty
around the world today decide they wish to limit their offspring?
This question of motivation seems to me of the utmost importance
but did not seem to be a
priority topic at Cali.
More attention was focused there on studies that associate
fertility rates with such factors as the age of marriage, the education
of women, the employment of women, the status of women, social security
schemes, infant mortality, or the distribution of income. I don't doubt that a fairly high correlation of fertility with
these factors is normally found but, except for the case of the age of
marriage, it seems likely that their relationship is associative rather
than causal.
In Kuwait, a country with a high level of women's education,
broad distribution of income, total social security, rapid upward
mobility, low infant mortality, complete urbanization, readily available
contraceptives, and most of the other trappings of a developed society,
the crude birthrate of the native Kuwaiti population is still 46 per
thousand. It may be argued
that considering their individual wealth and their plethora of
educational and occupational opportunities there is no reason for
Kuwaitis to limit their population; but I don't see that the individual
prospects for Kuwaitis are much different from Kansans or Minnesotans in
these respects. Unless the
fertility rate can be explained entirely in terms of the status and
occupational opportunities for women, we need to look more deeply into
the underlying values and beliefs of Kuwaitis, and other people, before
we will understand their fertility behavior. Kuwait, by achieving the social infrastructure of development
without having to go through the long and arduous process of increasing
individual productivity, seems to offer some evidence that fertility is
more associated with individual values, attitudes and beliefs than with
income, social security, education, infant mortality and the other
aspects of modern society. This is an unproved assertion but, if
substantiated, it should have a serious effect on the way we spend our
money in the population field.
Research Need
I have tried above to make the case that progress in achieving
educational and population program objectives may be seriously inhibited
by the slow pace of individual modernization in developing countries,
and that individual modernization involves changes in underlying
attitudes, beliefs and values. If
this is so, the question remains as to whether there are actions that
governments and foreign aid agencies can take which could hope to
accelerate the process. The first priority should go to research that would extend
our knowledge of the nature of psychological modernization and the
process through which it occurs.
One must admit that the intellectual tools for analyzing
individual modernization are not ideal. The modest skimming of psychological literature I have been able
to do, with Terry Prothro's guidance, seems to indicate a lack of a
general theory of psychological development. Indeed, the notion of psychological modernity is itself
controversial. There is,
however, growing interest in the field. The state of the art is nicely summarized by Richard Michael
Suzman in an article entitled "Psychological Modernity," which
appeared in the International
Journal of Comparative Sociology, Volume XIV, 3 -4.
Suzman sets out to demonstrate that there is a wide range of
beliefs, values, perceptions and behavior which are related closely to
the central institutions of society and which form a "modernity
syndrome." This
syndrome is thought to be connected to central and pervasive
structures of personality and cognition, relevant to functioning in
society and significantly influenced by education and occupation. He believes the central attributes of personality concerned to be
authoritarianism, field independence, and ego development.
The central hypothesis is that "in general, modern men are more
field independent and differentiated, more conceptually abstract, and
have higher levels of ego development."
The concept of field independence has to do with analytical
ability, inner guidance for action, and "the ability to break an
existing set and extract a precept from a confusing and embedding
concept." This
presumably is related to the flexibility of individuals in understanding
and coping with change in a
social setting.
Larry Kohlberg and Jane Loevinger, working independently, have
begun to develop models of ego development (Kohlberg calls it “moral
development") in terms of stages. Loevinger's stages are summarized in the Suzman article as
follows:
--
The Impulsive stage is characterized by impulsiveness and a fear of
retaliation, with people seen as sources of supply and in which an
exploitative orientation is often adopted.
--
The Self Protective stage is characterized by a fear of being caught, a
lack of personal responsibility, and opportunism. The person is
concerned with control and being controlled.
--
The Conformist stage is characterized by conformity toward external
rules, and identification with parents and authorities is strong.
--
In the Conscientious stage, self-evaluated standards, self-criticism and
guilt for consequences are salient, together with long-term goals.
--
At the Autonomous stage, the person is more able to deal with
conflicting inner needs than is the Conscientious person.
Other work, more familiar to me at least, by David McClellan,
Alex Inkeles and Erik Erikson on individual modernization is also
valuable in beginning to chart the terrain. I believe the Foundation could substantially enhance the amount
of work being done, as it did in the reproductive sciences, by concerted
grant support.
Operational
Implications
Assuming such a program were undertaken, what could we
hypothesize might come out of it which would enhance our efforts in the
fields of education and population?
Here one can only put forward some guesses and I do so only to
illustrate that the results of this kind of basic research are likely to
have important operational implications.
. . . education. In education, psychologists and anthropologists have studied the
childrearing practices of many traditional societies. They have demonstrated that from birth, parents instill in
children sets of values and beliefs to prepare the child to perform well
in the social and physical environment of his society. These traits are reinforced throughout the life of the individual
when the traditional society is relatively static. At the present time, when the demands on adults in developing
countries are changing so rapidly, there is a natural lag in changing
childrearing practices, partly because few people are consciously trying
to do so.
One can hypothesize that individuals who, through education or
occupation, become members of the modernized sector of society will
raise their children quite differently from the way they themselves were
brought up, but the bulk of the people in most developing countries
remain in the traditional sector and therefore change their childrearing
practices very slowly if at all. This
means that children from traditional families will encounter serious
adjustment difficulties when they enter school. (The high repeat and dropout rates of elementary schools in rural
areas may be a reflection of this phenomenon, but other factors matter
here as well.)
The school environment is likely to be particularly difficult for
the child if it is modeled on a foreign system of education. In transferring modern educational structures and curricula from
advanced countries, we have implicitly assumed something about the
attitudes, values and beliefs of the students who are to be educated in
these systems. If a child
survives in school long enough, he presumably acquires many of these
attributes. Empirically
this seems to be borne out by the alienation that has been observed to
occur between the educated child and his surroundings. When the education process proceeds to the point of graduate
study abroad, we often observe that individuals seem to be more at home
and productive in the society in which they received their highest
training than in their home cultures.
As we understand more about what happens when the traditionally
raised child goes to school, we should be able to adjust the educational
process to accommodate traditional values more smoothly. We should also be able to identify those aspects of traditional
childrearing that most inhibit effective functioning in modern
institutions. It would be
possible under certain conditions to alter childrearing objectives
through educational programs for the mothers.
If one were to attempt to design childrearing programs and
educational programs which seek to enhance the modernization of
attitudes, values and beliefs on the basis of present knowledge, the
results would probably be unacceptably western in orientation. At present we have an inadequate understanding of which
attributes of modernization are essential to the process, and which
merely reflect western culture. It
may be possible through comparative research, for example with Japanese
society, to distinguish the essentials of modernity from the cultural
trappings they wear in the West, and then to dress them up in forms more
familiar to the developing society.
I have come to believe on the basis of observation that our
typical concentration on cognitive development is too narrow. Even at the Ph.D. level, we often find that academically
successful people tend to be inadequately conscientious, autonomous, and
imaginative to make good use of their extensive training. We need a deeper understanding of the psychological processes
involved before we can come to grips with some of the key elements of
human development.
One set of operational objectives in the field of education would
be to find ways of adapting childrearing practices that fit modern
purposes, and of adapting educational systems to fit the local culture. Another set of activities could be to design non-formal experiences
that supplement formal education and relate classroom experience to the
realities of the society.
. . . population.
In the population field, the objective must be to shorten the
demographic transition between a lowering of mortality rates and a
lowering of fertility rates. Decreasing
fertility rates presumably occur because of people's changing
perceptions of the necessity or desirability of large families. Traditional attitudes, values and religious beliefs throughout
the world seem to have included strong motivation for high fertility. By the same token, the modernization process seems inherently to
include motivation for lower fertility. (One might even speculate that the level of development of a
population is more closely correlated inversely with its fertility rate
than with its per capita income.)
We should be very sensitive to opportunities for working with
religious groups that seek either directly to reduce fertility or to
improve the quality of the home environment. Changes in the home environment and in the attitude of mothers
toward children may provide the key to lower fertility. Programs which seek to educate mothers on such questions as
nutrition, the ways in which children develop, the importance of early
childhood experiences, sanitation and the causes of disease, etc., may
have greater impact on fertility than direct exhortations to reduce
birth rates.
. . .
women. If we were to increase attention to individual modernization
outside formal institutions, we would need to re-evaluate the importance
of women's role in development. As
the key person in the family who transmits the values and attitudes of
culture to children, and as an important decision-maker on fertility,
the woman has been surprisingly neglected in development programs. It is true there is a rising awareness of the importance of women
in development; however, much of the new energies are being devoted to
attempts to change women's status and social roles for essentially
ideological reasons without understanding the cultural environment in
which development takes place.
. . . mass media. If we were to decide to concentrate on modernizing attitudes and
beliefs, particularly of women, we would probably conclude that mass
media should have a greater share of our attention than it has in the
past. In many cultures it
is very difficult to reach the woman with direct communications, except
through radio and, in some cases,
television. Television is
likely to be the most important modernizing force in the long run
because of its sheer power, but in the short run radio will reach more
people. The radio has been
used for transmitting direct messages concerning farming, fertility and
formal education, but I doubt that it has systematically been employed
in changing attitudes and values except in communist states.
The style of communications used in development should also be
reviewed in the light of the level of psychological development of the
target audiences. If, as
Loevinger suggests, people at different stages of ego development march
to very different drummers, the choice of medium and the source of the
message become crucially important
to its reception.
Summary
This began as a response to your paper on education strategy and
to the Cali Conference on population strategy. I have departed from the themes we usually discuss under those
rubrics out of a deep sense of misgiving about the long run success of
programs currently followed in these fields. Individual modernization appeals to me as an alternative route
that we should explore.
W. Arthur Lewis concluded some 20 odd years ago that the
development process is a desirable activity, not because it increases
human happiness or contentment, but because it increases the range of
human choices. Economic development, at least to the point of meeting basic
nutritional and shelter requirements, is necessary to make choices
possible. But it is not
sufficient, and of this we have all become increasingly aware in the
past decade. We have also
become aware that it is impossible for the entire world to achieve the
European or American standard of material well being with any technology
now known without severely damaging the world environment.
If we were able to redefine development objectives in terms of
increasing human potential through enhancing the level of individual
maturity, we could recapture a lost sense of the possibility of progress
in human affairs. We may,
at the same time, make a mid-course correction in our programs
that will enable them more effectively
to increase human welfare.
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