a Choice of countries, schools
b Conceptual map
c Relationship between student survey and contextual inquiries
d Nature of an impact study
e Questions that students could understand
f What "is" and what "ought" to be
g Linguistic issues
Botswana, India, Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe agreed to join the project in 1995, following discussion with the Intercultural Centre for Intercultural Studies at the London University Institute of Education which had been in touch with other nations also. In addition to a willingness to participate, four other factors had to be considered: Commonwealth representativeness, support or concern for human rights in the country, convenience in managing the project, and financial cost.
Inevitably there was an arbitrary and fortuitous element in the final selection. With regard to Commonwealth representativeness, however, it was felt deisrable to include at least one developed country, and at least one with a relatively small population. It was necessary to obtain support from countries in different world regions, because the Commonwealth is a trans-regional association. Participation from India was particularly welcome, because over half the people in the 53 nation Commonwealth are citizens of that country. It was not, unfortunately, possible to include any Caribbean or Pacific nation.
While all Commonwealth countries assert their support for human rights, and none are totally immune from problems, it was felt that something more than the interest of an Education Ministry would be helpful in justifying inclusion in this study. While other states could also meet such criteria, it is worth observing certain positive elements in the four participants.
For example, Botswana has a particularly strong record in Africa of plural, multi-party democracy since independence; it was partly for that reason that it hosted a meeting of African Commonwealth leaders and political parties, to discuss democracy, in February 1997. India has recently established a National Human Rights Commission, has a strong culture of human rights NGOs, and is in the forefront of legal redress through public interest litigation based on its constitution. Northern Ireland, which has suffered from over 25 years of internal conflict, has the only compulsory curricular commitment in this field in Britain (Education for Mutual Understanding). Zimbabwe, the home of the Harare Commonwealth Declaration, 1991, has an inter-ministerial commitment at government level and strong NGOs.
Convenience and financial cost also came into the equation. At one stage the Institute of Education was exploring the involvement of five countries (almost a tenth of the Commonwealth membership) but lack of sufficient funding precluded this possibility. The then Overseas Development Administration in Britain and the Commonwealth Secretariat were only able to support work with developing countries, which meant that developed ones would have to pay for their own participation. There was a possible advantage in that two of the countries in the study are geographical neighbours.
In spite of the element of arbitrariness about the final selection, it was felt that inclusion of these four countries would give a sufficiently broad base to permit conclusions of wider significance. It was expected that other Commonwealth nations would wish to build on this work.
The international committee set up to oversee the project initially agreed to select a random sample of 100 students of 14 and 100 of 16 in five schools. An equal number of males and females were to be chosen. Because of the Standards system of forms or classes, in use in Botswana and Zimbabwe, this age difference could not be exact. But in principle the groups were separated by two years of schooling whose impact could be assessed. The students were told that their questionnaire responses would be kept confidential.
The choice of schools was left to the project team in each country, but the aim was to have a rough cross-section of institutions which would have differing characteristics and include main school types. Factors which might be aimed at included rural v urban, mixed v single sex, high status v lower prestige. If all the sample students had been drawn from the same type of school it might have given a misleading national picture, and obscured within-country differences.
The research phase took place in 1996, following trialling in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Britain. Schools were chosen as follows:
Botswana: Bokamoso Community Junior School in Gaborone, the capital, represented government urban schools. Legae Academy in Gaborone represented the exclusive private schools which charge for tuition and are often quite expensive. Capital Continuation Classes in Gaborone is a less privileged private night school catering in this study for students aged 17 to 37. Mosetlha Community Junior School is a government school in Bobonong, a rural village in central Botswana over 400km from the capital and 90km from the nearest town, with little influence from national media. Shakawe Community Junior School is a government school in a remote area, over 2000km from the capital. In Botswana the student questionnaires were delivered to classes of 40-43 students to fill out and then randomised in the office to produce ten male and ten female responses per class. Hence there were exactly 100 male and 100 female respondents.
India: Due to the huge population and expanse of India it was decided to select eight schools, four in rural and four in urban areas in four different states, Karnataka, Orissa, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. All schools are affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education, and are coeducational, and no private schools are included in the sample. All follow broadly the same courses of study at Upper Primary (classes VI-VIII) and Secondary (classes IX-X) stages, are subject to the same public exams at the end of the Secondary stage, and both English and Hindi are in use as languages for study as well as media of instruction. The total sample numbered 312 (151 girls and 161 boys). The schools were: D.M. School, Mysore, Karnataka (urban); Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Shivaragudda, Mandya District, Karnataka (rural); D.M. School, Bhubaneswar, Orissa (urban); Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Munduli, District Cuttack, Orissa (rural); D.M. School, Ajmer, Rajasthan (urban); Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Nandla, District Ajmer, Rajasthan (rural); D.M. School, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh (urban); Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Pawarkheda, District Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh (rural).
Northern Ireland: Due to the sensitive situation in Northern Ireland, at a time when the then cease-fire was breaking down, the research team promised anonymity to the five schools participating in the project. School 1 is a controlled (Protestant) high school with around 450 male pupils, serving a deprived working class urban area with strong loyalist/Unionist/Protestant affiliations. School 2 is an elite coeducational grammar school (Protestant) for 1208 pupils in a large town with a rural catchment. School 3 is a coeducational Integrated school (ie serving both Protestant and Catholic communities) in a disadvantaged urban area, which is regarded as innovative and effective. School 4 is a coeducational (Catholic) secondary established by a merger of two schools three years ago, where almost half of students are eligible for free school meals, located in a town but with a large rural catchment. School 5 is an urban maintained (Catholic) girls' secondary school of 933 pupils in a strongly Nationalist/Republican area, which has been considered highly innovative and won many awards. The total sample involved 108 14 year olds and 106 16 year olds, of whom 108 were male and 106 female.
Zimbabwe: The research team selected five schools of differing characteristics in the Harare Region (Educational Province); due to local circumstances they obtained 97 responses from the Form II students (the younger group), of whom 54 were males and 43 females, and 92 from the Form IV's (the older group), of whom 50 were males and 42 females. The schools were: Prince Edward, a government-owned boys' boarding school set up in the colonial era for white pupils, now a well-resourced multiracial school recruiting from well-to-do families; Girls High, a government-owned girls' boarding school, similar in history and present circumstances to Prince Edward; Zengeza 1 High, a coeducational day school set up just prior to independence in Chitungwiza, a not so affluent dormitory for Harare, now with large student numbers (2101) and short of classrooms and teaching materials; Domboramwari Secondary, a church-owned coeducational day school set up in the 1990s in a shanty, pert-urban suburb, serving low income families and poorly endowed with resources; and Mufakose 2 High, a government coeducational day school of 2220, opened after independence in a high density suburb, serving low income families and short of resources.
At its first meeting, in London in November 1995, the international project committee discussed what dimensions should be covered if students were to demonstrate a basic understanding of human rights. The aim was to choose aspects which might be expected to appear in the different curricula and school systems of the four countries, and which together would provide a fair coverage. Inevitably the selection was arbitrary: law and the administration of justice; equality of opportunity; history; civic and social rights and responsibilities; consumer rights; violence; and identity. It was left to the London Institute of Education to devise a student questionnaire which could measure students' understanding.
Undoubtedly other issues could have been included, and some matters of particular interest in these and other Commonwealth countries were omitted. The case for these dimensions may be summarised thus:
An understanding of principles of justice was felt to be fundamental. The idea of equality of opportunity, in areas like employment and gender, was considered essential to human rights as they have developed in the twentieth century. History is a panorama of abuse, struggle and articulation of rights, and can be taught in ways which explain these. Civic and social rights and responsibilities were included not only to cover the important sector of economic and social rights, but to test awareness that rights denote corresponding responsibilities.
Consumer rights are not always covered in a human rights rubric, but the committee decided to include them because in modern circumstances there are important public and individual concerns in relation to advertising, commerce and the supply of information. Protection from violence, sometimes defined as the right to a peaceful existence, was deemed an essential component. A person's identity was to be included not only as a key building block for human rights, but because it is often an issue in adolescence.
Guidance from the project as to how these concepts might be understood stated:
Law and the administration of justice: citizens may only be arrested according to the law; police and security agencies should behave according to the law and be publicly accountable; innocence is presumed until guilt is proven; there are proper guarantees for the defense in court; trials are public; the judiciary is independent; prisoners are not mistreated.
Equality of opportunity: people should have equal opportunities in their rates of pay, in their ability to use public services (including education and health), in their access to justice, according to different parameters - gender, age, ethnic, religious, linguistic, etc; that rights are inevitably denied when there is discrimination which cannot be defended in terms of the interests of those who appear to be discriminated against.
History: an understanding that rights have been denied in history, and that much conflict has originated from a denial of rights - eg the Indian freedom movement from the denial of political rights in India during the British Empire, the civil war in Zimbabwe from the denial of majority rights by the white minority regime, the recent troubles in Northern Ireland as a result of discrimination against the Catholic/Republican community; an awareness that history has often keen written by the winners, who have overlooked or denied the rights of the defeated; an awareness of how human rights have been enlarged in the course of history (eg the US Civil War and the campaigns of Wilberforce in the abolition of human slavery); an appreciation that the arrival of political democracy or national independence does not mean that a struggle for rights has ended (eg the Harare Commonwealth Declaration, military dictatorships in Nigeria since independence, the struggle for women's rights in democracies).
Civic and social rights and responsibilities: the right to vote, to be informed about what the government and public authorities do; freedoms of expression, association, and religion; the right to education; responsibility to obey just laws, to pay taxes, to support the rights of fellow-citizens; trying to combine economic, social, cultural and development rights with democratic civil and political rights; being aware of the constitution; having opportunities to practice rights and responsibilities.
Consumer rights: the right to know what a product is or contains (for instance the content of a tin of food); the right to redress if a product or service does not do what it claims; rights to information in a form that can be readily understood (ie not incomprehensible "small print", or guarantees which are difficult to realise); a right to public services which are not corrupt or biased by bribery.
Violence: violence inevitably threatens the rights of those against whom it is deployed; there is a distinction between legitimate violence used by the state (when a policemen grabs a robber to disarm him), and illegitimate state violence (when a policeman hits a citizen for no reason) and illegitimate private violence (when a man beats his wife); negotiation or mediation strategies may provide ways of settling a quarrel which respect rights; bullying threatens the rights of children; children have rights; people have a right to feel safe.
Identity: a person's right to a name; a child's right to be respected and valued; the rights of parents to bring up children as they wish within the law; a right to hold and develop one's own language, culture and religion; a right to arbitrate or have a voice in the arbitration when differing rights appear to be in conflict (ie the right to an autonomous moral and political judgement).
The core of the study rests on the student survey in the four countries, which was first analysed by each national team. But it was agreed that this would only make sense in a wider context. Additional elements undertaken were:
i An initial survey, in each country, of how human rights are treated in that country's secondary school curriculum, and the materials for students and other types of support (including initial and in-service training) which are available for teachers.
ii Qualitative interviews with each of the heads and two of the teachers from each of the schools in the study. These sought to test teacher views on objectives, achievements and problems - the aim of education for human rights, the suitability of the syllabus and resources available, and the school context for the student survey. They were to be supplemented by interviews with a number of educational administrators or advisers, with a similar purpose.
Specific issues covered were: perceptions of human rights education in the curriculum and its effectiveness; school ethos and human rights education; relevant teacher education; availability of learning materials; the age at which human rights concepts should be introduced; the potential for Commonwealth cooperation; the role of teacher associations and NGOs; whether or how there should be exams; views on a cross-curricular, permeation, infusion or single subject strategy; the scope for new Ministry initiatives.
iii Qualitative follow-up interviews with a 10 per cent sample (that is, ten students aged roughly 14 and ten aged roughly 16) in each country, to discover how they perceived this curriculum, what impressed them and so on. These interviews enabled researchers to check beyond the questionnaire, to see how far students in the two age groups had a genuine understanding of the concepts involved.
Topics included possible difficulty with the questionnaire; whether human rights are important and the familiarity of the term; whether the seven dimensions of the Conceptual Map are being covered at school; whether there are adequate resources (such as textbooks or copies of the constitution); whether the student's family is interested in human rights; and whether-they are better covered in one or two subjects or as a cross-curricular theme.
The basic methodology of the study was intended to be simple, in order that it could Be carried out in varied circumstances by busy people. Interviews were semi-structured, not expected to last for more than an hour at most, and in fact were conducted differently in the various countries. For example in India three teachers from each of the project schools were interviewed together, separately from school principals; in Northern Ireland educational advisers rather than administrators were interviewed; in Botswana ten administrators were interviewed.
The curriculum audit provided a policy and analytical framework in each country and the interview material was used in two ways - to amplify and contextualise the raw data arising from the student questionnaires, and to support the project's recommendations to the Commonwealth Education Ministers' Conference, 1997.
The object was to see how far students are learning about human rights at secondary school. In an ideal world this study would have been longitudinal, to assess how the young people in the sample had altered their understanding of human rights concepts as they progressed upwards. Shortage of time and resources meant that two snapshots, of students' responses at two ages, were obtained instead.
In this study, where national teams had discretion and varied resources available for their analysis, comparisons between the younger and older age groups were made for every question in India and Zimbabwe; on some questions in Northern Ireland where there seemed to be an age-related discrepancy; and for no questions in Botswana.
The difficulties in this approach to testing impact by a comparison of two snapshots go beyond the obvious fact that the nature of the curriculum and the degree to which human rights issues are discussed outside the school (in media, home or peer group) must affect the responses. In fact in Botswana the congruence of the syllabus studied by this group of students with the Conceptual Map was minimal, and mainly confined to one subject, social studies. In Northern Ireland the responses from one ("Protestant") school were probably affected by local controversy about marching traditions at the time the questionnaire was applied in 1996. In Zimbabwe the effect of the Commonwealth summit in 1991 had probably been greater in the Harare area, where the sample schools were picked, than it would have been in schools further from the capital.
Furthermore there is a difficulty in equating questionnaire answers, or even interview responses, with broader attitudes which may lead to action or inaction. Where topics transcend academic knowledge and touch students' values there must always be an element of caution in interpreting the reliability of the data. However, as with opinion poll data on public issues, such material is at least as good as any other that can be obtained by means of social science and has to be taken as a baseline.
The greatest limitation in the study is, rather, the smallness of the overall sample. It should be emphasised again that the results are to be regarded as indicative only, and not definitive even for the countries which took part.
They describe the material obtained from these 23 project schools when the survey was made in 1996.
The student questionnaire (see Section 6) aimed to be equally straightforward for respondents in each country. Each group of questions corresponded to a separate dimension in the Conceptual Map. The first two groups - on law and the administration of justice, and on equality of opportunity - described commonplace incidents of an apparent theft from a shop and an interview for a job, and built questions round them. The remaining groups were more abstract and conceptual in nature, and asked the students to rank their answers in terms of agreement/disagreement, importance/unimportance and so on. Each batch of questions concluded with at least one that was open-ended, to provide for a student input which might be divergent.
It is not easy to devise questions which can be equally meaningful in varied societies. For instance, in Northern Ireland, where many court houses are fortified and juvenile cases are not heard in public, 56.5% of the sample answered No to the question, "Would you expect members of the public to watch the case being tried in court?" In Botswana, where media penetration is not high and there is no national television service although South African TV channels are received, it was inevitable that students would report that media had played a less prominent role in promoting understanding. Botswana answers about advertising and consumer rights may also have been affected.
Broadly speaking the students said they understood the term human rights, and had little difficulty with the questionnaire. One or two questions may have been overly complex - for instance Indian researchers thought it might have been more productive to have separated religious from other freedoms in the question, "Imagine that you are a grown-up adult in your country. How important do you think it is for you and the well-being of your country that you and your friends should....Be free to join societies, political parties, trade unions, and to follow the religion of your choice?"
In Zimbabwe there was an interesting response to the question, "All countries suffer from fights and murders. Fights in the home can result in injuries. Violence is much worse where there is a war or civil war. Do you think...people who use weapons or violence do so because they think they are stronger?" Of the younger group 52.9% disagreed, as did 47.8% of the older ones - presumably because they saw a resort to weapons as a sign of weakness, a response or perhaps an interpretation which was different from that in the other three countries where the majority saw the use of violence as being resorted to by those who think they are stronger.
The questionnaire was not only concerned with understanding at different scholastic stages, but with students' ability to distinguish between reality in their societies and what they thought ought to happen, in terms of human rights or the national constitution. This approach was taken in order to ground the questionnaire in students' experience of their neighbourhoods, so that they could start by relating human rights issues to situations they knew.
The questions on law and the administration of justice, where a policeman catches a suspected thief, asked for instance, "Would you expect the policement to beat the person and put him or her in prison?" then later, "In this incident, what do you think should happen?" and finally, "From your experience, what do you think would really happen in practice if this incident took place near where you live?"
The students were generally sophisticated in their replies. In this particular question, 72.1% of the Indian sample thought the policeman would indeed beat the person and put him or her in prison. But when asked the open-ended question about what should happen, 40.7% opted for compassion, leniency, an awareness of the social causes of crime and a proper judicial process, and 33.7% mentioned trial and punishment according to the law, with humane treatment; only 17.9% actually supported the idea that police should beat up the person ahead of a judicial process. When finally the Indian sample was asked what would really happen nearby, in a second open-ended question, 50% still expected unlawful police action with bribery or beating.
As in adult opinion polling the student respondents were not entirely logical in their sequence of replies. For instance in Zimbabwe there were contradictory responses to successive questions about equality of opportunity in employment. The introductory statement read, "You see four persons applying for a job who have the same qualifications and the same experience. Two are men and two are women. The persons come from different tribes, races, religions and speak different languages. What do you think will really happen in practice?...A person will get the job who is most like the people who make the appointment in terms of their sex, tribe, race, religion and language?"
In response 49.5% of the younger and 56.5% of the older Zimbabwean groups answered Yes. But 70.1% of the younger and 81.5% also said Yes to the next question, "In practice the person who will get the job will be the one who performs best at the interview test?" Coming back to this in the final open-ended question 75.3% of the younger and 88% of the older groups said that the job should be awarded on merit.
The survey was originally compiled in English. However in many Commonwealth countries including Botswana, India and Zimbabwe, English is a second or third language for citizens, often only learned at the secondary stage. Not all the samples were comfortable with it.
In India the questionnaire was translated into Hindi, and roughly half the sample answered the Hindi version. In Zimbabwe, in the question relating to possible bribe-taking by officials the Shona word chiokomuhomwe was added in explanation; "assessors" were added to "judge and jury". In Botswana "consumer rights" were described as "buyer rights" and questions were translated into local languages where students said they had difficulty. In Northern Ireland the reference to colonialism in the history section may have caused some difficulties, either because the word was not understood, or because of contested views of the history of Britain and Ireland.
However only in Botswana does it seem that a lack of linguistic confidence may have had some effect. A lower response rate on some questions there and a greater shyness with the open-ended ones in particular may be explained by this reason.
