CITIZENSHIP AND NATIONALITY: HOW YOUNG PEOPLE DEVELOP
PREJUDICE
Cedric Cullingford
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, Edinburgh, 20-23 September 2000
INTRODUCTION
Those who promote courses in citizenship, on a national or European scale, rarely spend time reflecting on the ambiguities of their intentions. No one would wish to disagree with aspiring to civic virtues, or defining the proper duties to the community (Crick 1998). And yet such fostering of the role of the citizen is another way of furthering the course of cultural identity; the depiction of the self as part of a group, or a tribe, or a nation. Sometimes the connection between the benign side of citizenship and the darker side of chauvinism is clearly, made particularly by politicians calling for greater efforts for, or pride in, their country. But usually the deep underlying effects of promoting citizenship are ignored.
One reason for this is simply the complexities of the subject. By the time an education system introduces model concepts, the essential attitudes which form the cultural outlook of the individual are firmly established. The ways in which people behave towards each other, including the degree of tolerance and understanding, depend upon the extent to which they are insecure, willing to be influenced or full of curiosity. These are not matters easily learned, nor are they factors purely of personality. These are certain kinds of behaviour, and that is what we are exploring here. Whilst recognising that any true understanding of human development includes embracing the complexities of nature or nurture, we should recognise that nature itself is a result of cultural influences, in expression and behaviour.
Citizenship is formed early but only appears to be a matter of concern or study when it is manifested in extreme ways. We do not need to go as far as Kosovo and Serbia to be reminded of the consequences of extreme senses of identity. The suspicion of others, and the almost tribal demarcations between groups of people, are constant and, some might argue, necessary forms of distinction (Bourdieu 1984).
Courses in citizenship are ostensibly concerned with both civic duties and with tolerating others, but they are notoriously ineffective in the promotion or changing of attitudes (Greenfield 1995). This is because of the very complexity of the concept, and the subtle influences both in the home as well as the neighbourhood and school which are brought to bear. The very mention of nationalism, however, suggests how important it is that some effort is made both to understand and deal with the phenomenon, and to make the distinction between the positive and negative sides.
Perhaps the most potent example of the extremes of citizenship remains Nazi Germany. It illustrates several factors in understanding human behaviour. The opportunity for the insecure and beleaguered to bully others, and the pleasures of hysteria are clearly manifested. So is the ability of people to hold contradictory and self-deceiving beliefs, like both knowing what was happening to the Jews and not knowing at the same time. The ability to cut out certain insights and realisations, deliberately, because of fear, or subconsciously out of psychological shock, are illustrated by the reactions of many ordinary people to the rise of Nazism. The Nazi regime, however, illustrates very clearly the two sides of the concept of national identity, the positive belief in certain virtues, and the correlative antipathy to certain others, in that case defined both as other races, ‘untermenschen’ and as the disabled.
Nazi Germany illustrates the most extreme course in citizenship. The propaganda within the schools and through the media was pervasive. On the hand lay an intense belief in, and promotion of, an ideal. Ritual was at the heart. Anyone who has been officially warned against it and then seen Leni Riefenstahl’s film about Hitler – “Triumph of the Will” – must have been struck by the strong belief, as in the laying on of hands on many flags, in some intense spiritual force. There is more than a hint of the absurd, and certainly a hefty dose of vulgarity in all the posturings, but there is no doubting the belief of those who took part. This might be a long way from the promotion of everyday citizenship, but it is merely the pathological extreme.
The other side of the development of the nationalism was the need for an enemy, for an evil force to balance the good. Whilst the Jews in Germany felt themselves to be loyal citizens, and had fought with equal courage in the first world war, they very early on became blamed for all the troubles, world-wide. The way the collective antipathy was played up has often been descibed, if not always understood. Ordinary people found themselves carrying out actions that with hindsight were blatantly wrong, if official (Arendt 1968). Let us take one example. A small town in Southern Germany, Freudental, was inhabited by a large majority of Jews. One day, before the war, all the men were rounded up and marched along the long road to the nearest town with a railway station. At first, they were comparatively cheerful, assuming there was some purpose in this. By the time they got there, those ordinary citizens doing their duty had
already begun to give unnecessary beatings, to see what had been their neighbour as objects of hate (Goldhagen 1996).
Desciptions of what took place abound, and explanations of the causes, from the philosophy of Herder to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, are well known. But understanding how people could behave like that, or how they behaved in the breaking up of Yugoslavia, is more difficult. To talk of coercion or simple obedience is not enough (Milgram 1974). There are always some who will not put up with intolerance, who will remain true to their deeper understanding. Why? What are the root causes of certain attitudes and behaviour that develop, despite courses in citizenship? In a study of one liberal democracy that has long made a point of teaching civics, it was found that prejudice against gypsies increases in young people year by year (Toivonen and Cullingford 1998). What are the insecurities that become antipathies?
The Research
The empirical research reported here is mostly based on lengthy semi-structured interviews carried out over a number of years; a fuller explanation of the methodology and the findings can be found elsewhere (Cullingford 2000). At the core of the research are 160 interviews carried out with children from a variety of backgrounds aged between 6 and 11. There are two important priciples that need to be borne in mind. The young people interviewed were allowed to discuss what they wanted and the subjects covered included a wide range of interest. They did not know anything about the agenda, or any hint of what they were ‘supposed’ to say. Given the fact that a lot of their experience of school is a matter of guessing what they are supposed to say, to please the teacher and to fulfil the requirements of assessments, this is important.
The other important principle is that the analysis of the transcripts revealed unexpected findings. Nothing was anticipated. The starting point was research into young people’s attitudes towards other countries, including Germany and including interviews with young Germans (Cullingford and Husemann 1995). As the interviews developed, the range of interests not only grew wider but connected to other research interests (eg. Cullingford 1999a). It was only gradually that the significance of the findings were realised, as the richness of the data revealed certain consistent themes. The attitudes towards other countries related to attitudes to home and school, to neighbourhoods and communities and to groups. The influences that were brought to bear, from the media more than the official curriculum, were also revealed. All we can do here is to try to summarize some of the most significant of the consistent themes that run through the findings irrespective of socio-economic background or gender. Whilst there are developmental issues these are less important than the main themes.
Young People’s Perception of the World
We should not underestimate the intensity of the young person’s gaze. The ability of infants to observe and analyse has now been generally recognised, even if the significance of this has not always been understood (Pugh 1996). The social understanding of other people’s points of view and emotional well-being is also expressed at a young age (Dunn 1989). This means that young children are constantly studying other people’s behaviour, forming relationships and seeing the distinctions between truth and falsehood. Their analysis of their experience is always their aim and does not depend on other people’s explanations. Such observation can be, for some, very traumatic (Cullingford 1996b). It is, however, always at least a little traumatic for all, since what they witness includes the inadvertent, the overheard. The mass of information that they are faced with completely uncensored.
Long before they are simplified into stereotypes, young people understand and experience social distinctions. They see them in their environment and they undergo them in the home. To some extent stereotypes are inevitable; a form of necessary social categorisation. Personal connections, intellectual and emotional warmth, are matters of real importance. This is why children’s acknowledgement of truth and falsehood are so significant; they see the distinction between public and private morality (Webb 1997). The sense of belonging somewhere is such a strong desire that it has wide ramifications. From the start, we see the incipient connection with both the intellectual and emotional formation of a sense of groups. Whilst a lot is talked about bonding, individual to individual, such personal connections only make complete sense because they contrast with other kinds of relationship. The desire to be the centre of attention is a form of manifest social rivalry. Already the personal definitions against others are being formed.
The awareness of the sense of being an insider or outsider, of having different kinds of social relationship, is not only a matter of exclusive bonding but a result of observation of other people. Young children are not blind to all but their own needs, nor is the information they witness about human behaviour confined to the home. Their understanding of the way that people relate to each other is not limited to a focus on their own personal needs.
One of the earliest social phenomena in children is the awareness of norms, of standards of behaviour that connect people. The desire to fit in, to conform, is clearly demonstrated in the context of the school, but its earliest manifestations are already in place in the home. The desire to please, to be approved of, to work out what kinds of expectations others have is part of the experience of home; and conversely, when an infant finds there is no response to this desire, no iterative dialogue of gesture and voice, then the absence of emotions causes very early signs of social disjunction. Even the youngest of toddlers can demonstrate behaviour like that of gangs when they define themselves as entities by forcing reactions in others.
For most children the desire to fit in, to conform to expectations, is very strong. It is a part of manners, of accepting cultural norms. Indeed, the wish to belong is demonstrated in the complexities of children’s friendships (Davies 1983). We observe in schools two pronounced attitudes. One is to avoid standing out, by being too different. It is as if that final carelessness about what other people think were something dangerous, a falling into such social unacceptability that there is a need to form something alternative. The more one looks for evidence of the concept of normlessness, the harder it is to find. If certain collective norms are rejected, this is not just for an absence of boundaries or standards, but the seeking out of alternatives, often even stronger in their discipline. No-one can be truly ‘alienated’ from the society in which they are brought up (Williamson and Cullingford 1998). It is just that less complex forms of belonging are sought, with a firmer, less lubricious hold of approval in the minds of the peer group.
All want to belong, to have an ontological social centre where identity is gained through the eyes of others. There is nothing but society. This conformity is seen in two clear ways in school. At a formal level, the desire not to stand out, nor to be too clever or too slow at work, indeed to be invisible, charges most pupils’ attitudes to their work (Pye 1986). If they are too clever, too far ahead, or demand too much academic attention from the teachers, then they are in danger of being branded by their peers as ‘snobs’ or ‘swots’. On the other hand, if they are so slow that the work of the class is held up, they feel very guilty. This is social guilt, not academic. The emotional trauma of being branded stupid derives from its social basis, from being a deviator from the norm.
What children seek is the ‘middle way’. They do not want to stand out too much, and academically this means doing just enough to keep up with the collective expectations. The considerable energy, displaced form thinking, which is devoted to trying to guess what the teacher and the system wants, is a form of cultural prejudice that relies on the awareness of collective expectations, of belonging. Conformity is important. It is important not to stand out.
If that is true of the academic experience, it is equally true of the underlying social world of the school, of the personal connections with peer groups. Friendships are not just necessary pleasures but sources of considerable pain. Certain people are ‘in’ or ‘out’ of the centres of popularity. To be different is to ask for trouble, whatever that difference might be, from appearance to manners. Relationships are constantly being tested, not so much deliberately as because they are means of finding out about culturally shared standards and agreements. It is hard to go against the trend, and even harder to avoid an extreme alternative if the sense of collective belonging is lost.
The desire to conform, allied to te awareness that there are alternatives to the large complex standard sharing of collective even hierarchical attitudes, is the seed bed of this incipient manifestation of prejudice and the definitions of the self against collective ‘others’.
The definition of differences is a combination of general information, seeing the world as divided and disunited, and of emotional need. The longing of belong to a group is strong and the more difficult that group is to enter, the more desirable. We see young children looking to slightly older ones longing to please them. In the world of childhood age is an extremely important factor in collective definitions of difference. We see ‘victims’ assiduously and painfully admiring and following their bullies. Nothing is more painful than social exclusion; nothing so emotionally necessary as seeking comfort from the very person who has most hurt you.
This complexity of attitudes comes about because there are two often misunderstood phenomena about human behaviour. In the literature on bullies and victims, for example, much is made of the way in which the roles are defined. There are separate typologies for bullies or victims but the more we study children’s inner personal experiences the less we can rely purely on observable typologies (Boulton 1996). The inner psychological traumas are not only more subtle, but more complex. The notion of importance of ‘intention’ – to hurt or humiliate – whilst an upright moral principle of responsibility – is not helpful in understanding young children. For them the inadvertent is as important as the deliberate. The crucial factor is the sense of hurt and isolation, not the cause or the intention as such.
If this were not the case, and if the inadvertent hurt were not so traumatic, we could not explain this willingness of ordinary people to enjoy the power of torturing others, often people unknown to themselves. The general psychological feeling that an individual has become an ‘outsider’ who deserves what he gets is bolstered by the incipient memories of personal hurt. All feel, at some stage of another, that they are victims.
‘Intentionally’ is an unhelpful concept in understanding the experience of young people, although, like courses in citizenship, we cannot disagree with its moral principle. The distinction between bully and victim is, however, the more difficult because of the difficulties some people have in distinguishing between role and personality. A teacher or a policeman might have a job to do and impose discipline. It is part of the function of authority and the acceptance of authority. From the point of view of the recipient, however, the pain of being told off or ‘picked on’ is felt personally. The injury might not be deliberate but it is caused by someone who is palpably an individual. All the acceptance of distinction of role – ‘I have to do my job’ – can be quickly discarded by those who feel victimised. For the disfunctional, all roles become personal and personally directed. The irony is that the absence of personality in most relationships with teachers is turned into the most violent of personal confrontations in those who have not mastered the art of delicate impersonal and interpersonal relationships.