Jun 28, 2008 - Revival of shame: a way to create pro-people role models as opposed to ... The article proposes the revival of the sense of shame when.
Revival of shame: a way to create pro-people role models as opposed to decisively antipeople role models for the youths (Cite as: Kamanzi, A. & N Ishengoma, (2009), “Revival of shame: a way to create pro-‐people role models as opposed to decisively anti-‐people role models for the youths, in Journal of Education and Development, Dodoma: UDOM) Abstract Education of the youth is one of the key aspects for any society because it inculcates in the youths those valuable things that the society needs for its future survival. The article argues that the current society is being faced with a critical situation of “decisively anti-‐people” role models for the youths. Such models are fruit of the modernity, which has exalted reason over and above anything else. The article proposes the revival of the sense of shame when educating the youths so as to be able to get “pro-‐people” role models. Key words: Modernity, postmodernism, otherisation sin, pro-‐people role models, anti-‐ people role models, shame. Introductory note Speaking about a youth is always exciting, especially in the “modern” times when youths are faced with so many challenges, among which anti-‐people role models. The World Bank (2006) in the World Development Report, Development and the Next Generation, has recognised the centrality of youths and education for in development. Addressing issues about the youths is very exciting because of the feeling and real fact of contributing to what should be taken as the most serious responsibility of adults: catering for the sustainability of the human race. Among the Haya people of the North Western part of Tanzania, there is a saying that obuyo butaina nyana tibuliwo, that is: do not count on a herd of cattle without calves because it will be extinct in no time. This saying means that if any species does not have young ones, extinction is at the doorsteps. So, human race without youths is bound to get extinct and catering for the sustainability of the human race means promoting young men and women because they are potentially the future adults and elderly.
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In the words of George Orwel (1945) in his Animal Farm, he writes: “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. Similarly, it can be argued that all youths are equal, but some youths are more equal than others. To put it more dramatically, it can be said that all youths are equal, but some are less equal than others! All youths do not have the same good opportunities of having good role models so that they can learn from them in order to grow into responsible adults. Much as all youths have potentialities to grow up as full human beings, therefore, some youths cannot actualise these potentialities because of the structural challenges which the adults have cherished, are cherishing, and might continue cherishing. The sufferings and disorientations of young men and women anywhere is no good news for the human race. This is an unfortunate situation of which we are living with. Modernity, postmodernism, otherisation sin, pro-‐people, and anti-‐people role models are key words in this article. While modernity refers to the ethos of celebrating reason and its products, postmodernism refers to the ethos critical to modernity where deconstruction and pluralism is celebrated. The otherisation sin refers to the universalising character of modernity that looks at the Western reason and all the rationalities stemming from it as what should be reason for the whole of humanity. While pro-‐people role models are people who mind and respect others and have a sense of promotion of their lives, anti-‐ people role models are people who do not mind and respect others and do not have a sense of promotion of the other, but exploitation. Shame is consciousness or awareness of dishonour, disgrace, or condemnation, a painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, or unworthiness. This article brings forward an argument that the plight of the youth lies in the curtailed right to have pro-‐people role models, as a result of an “otherising sin” of modernity; with post-‐modernism, however, there is chance to forge a way for pro-‐people role models. The article begins with a description of what modernity and postmodernism are, after which it presents the “otherisation sin” of modernity. The article continues with the presentation of the weird role models who are a result of the modernity-‐shaped education system. The article winds up with a discussion on the revival of shame, an element played down in modernity, as a way to instruct the young people in universities for creation of pro-‐people role models. 2
Modernity and post-‐modernism Any University that has to do with social sciences in this era is faced with an obvious snag in the transmission of education: being caught up between modernity and postmodernism. While in modernity the university celebrates reason, in postmodernism, the university questions reason! The characteristic expression for modernity is reason. Its high point in the history of western ideas was the epoch following the Middle Ages in Europe, the “Enlightenment” period. This was the age of glorification of reason. According to Kant (1971:54), “the motto of enlightenment is therefore sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!” By then, a “mature person” meant an “enlightened person”. Modernity, opposing itself to other traditions anterior to it and to other cultures and confronting the geographic and symbolic diversity of other cultures, assumes a universalizing and totalising character. It, actually, “imposes itself throughout the world as a homogeneous unity, irradiating from the occident” (Baudrillard 1987:63). It is … a maelstrom that promises adventure, joy and growth, transformation of ourselves and the world, but also threatens to destroy cherished traditions and securities; it unites by cutting across class, region and ideology and yet disintegrates through incessant change, contradiction and ambiguity… (Boyne & Rattansi 1990:2)
Generally, modernity can be said to have the following characteristics that feature regularly: rationalism, domination, and universality. Modernity could not go without any criticism. Whereas Fredrick Nietzsche described it as an advanced state of decadence in which “higher types” are levelled by rationalism, liberalism, democracy, and socialism, and where instincts go into steep decline, Martin Heidegger saw it as the triumph of humanism and a project of a rational domination of nature and human beings, the culmination of a process of “forgetting Being”; Deleuze and Guattari saw modernity as “oppressive territorialisation of desire into constrictive social structures and repressed personalities that nevertheless multiplies rhizomatic lines of escape” (Best & Kellner 1991:112).
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Modernity, however, can be said to be fundamentally an ethos: a way of thinking, doing, reacting, and relating with things. In this line, Foucault (1991:31) argues that modernity is: … a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a voluntary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at once and the same time marks a relation of belonging and presents itself as a task. A bit, no doubt like what the Greeks called an ethos (1991:31).
A good checkpoint for modernity has been modernism which has always been preoccupied “with highlighting the means of representation, the disruption of narrative, and the contradiction and fragmentation in subjectivity and identity” (Boyne & Rattansi 1990:8). This implies that modernism has always acted as a checkpoint for modernity so as not to take for granted any simplistic beliefs in the progressive capacity of science and technology. It is in this sense that modernism has acted as a precursor to postmodernism. Postmodernism is a complex term, dialectically positioned against modernity. Postmodernism stands for “the incredulity towards meta-‐narratives” (Lyotard 1984). Losing credibility of the grand narratives, essentially a loss of belief in progress/becoming, which is the essence of Western history, postmodernism becomes a challenge to the whole Western tradition. Thus, postmodernism being a mood and challenge to progress is characterised by its menu of opposition, which it claims to be neither relativism, nor scepticism, nor nihilism. What postmodernism does is the rejection of the traditional dream of a complete, unique, and closed episteme, implying that it reacts to modern philosophy and its presuppositions of foundationalism, essentialism, and realism (Audi 1995:634), as key elements in the Enlightenment rationale. It is worth pointing out that philosophical postmodernism does not express a single point of view. For example, it is possible to talk of progressive post-‐moderns and conservative ones (Hutcheon 1989:1) and post-‐moderns of resistance and reaction (Aronowitz & Giroux 1991:19 & 59). In fact, a constant debate is going on as to how a true post-‐modern should approach life, even though a debate like this is problematic because it is most unpostmodern: it wants to cage and categorise people, something taboo to postmodernism!
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As a way to see these two perspectives of modernity and postmodernism in universities, an example that has to do with research could do. A thinking and practice that, for example, a quantitative approach in doing research is more “scientific” than a qualitative approach is still dominant in universities. The dominance is because, it is thought that a quantitative approach is more objective compared to a qualitative approach which is subjective. Objectivity is typical expression of modernity because it has to do with reason versus subjectivity which has to do with emotions. The objectivity-‐oriented mode of enquiry leads to preference to hypotheses-‐testing researches with the use and application of existing theories, frameworks, and models at an expense of dynamic approaches that have, for example, grounded theory as a preferred condiment. This is a kind of modernity hangover in research, a situation that facilitates in the failure to capture the emotional elements that influence a lot of people’s actions in everyday life. Qualitative approaches with their openness to enquiry would well capture such emotional elements. “Otherisation sin” of modernity Modernity in its celebration of reason promised adventure, joy, and growth, transformation of humans and the world by uniting all people across classes, regions, ideologies, and religions. Modernity, therefore, was the thing! And why not: who does not cherish reason? Who does not see the importance of reason? Who does not want promises of transformations? Modernity sounded like heaven on earth! The “otherisation sin” of modernity lies exactly in the universalising character of modernity, that is: looking at the Western reason and all the rationalities stemming from it as what should be reason for the whole of humanity. The “others’” reasons and rationalities are not reasonable. The otherisation sin has been translated in our universities through, for example, the content of what is being taught in social sciences. A typical example is what is commonly called Development Studies. In some universities, this course is compulsory to all students across the university. With its different perspectives, however, it is a course that has had as a starting and end points development from the Western discourse or rationality. This is development understood in terms of modernity. It is this “otherisation sin” that leads to the ignorance of all other reasons and their consequent rationalities: 5
I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to whites. There never was a civilised nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. … In Jamaica indeed they talk of one negro as a man of parts and learning; but ‘tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly (Gardner 2007:73, quoting David Hume).
It is due to the “lack of” the Western reason that, for instance, Africa’s peculiar character cannot be comprehended, as Hegel (1956:92) points out: The peculiarly African character is difficult to comprehend, for the very reason that in reference to it, we must quite give up the principle which naturally accompanies all our ideas—the category of Universality. In Negro life the characteristic point is the fact that consciousness has not yet attained to the realization of any substantial objective existence—as for example, God, or Law—in which the interest of man’s volition is involved and in which he realizes his own being. This distinction between himself as an individual and the universality of his essential being, the African in the uniform, undeveloped oneness of his existence has not yet attained; so that the Knowledge of an absolute Being, an Other and a Higher than his individual self, is entirely wanting. The Negro, as already observed, exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state. We must lay aside all thought of reverence and morality—all that we call feeling—if we would rightly comprehend him; there is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in this type of character. The copious and circumstantial accounts of Missionaries completely confirm this, and Mahommedanism appears to be the only thing which in any way brings the Negroes within the range of culture
Still, for Hegel (1956:99), Africa does not have history: ... At this point we leave Africa, not to mention it again. For it is no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit. Historical movements in it—that is in its northern part—belong to the Asiatic or European World. Carthage displayed there an important transitionary phase of civilization; but, as a Phoenician colony, it belongs to Asia. Egypt will be considered in reference to the passage of the human mind from its Eastern to its Western phase, but it does not belong to the African Spirit. What we properly understand by Africa, is the Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature, and which had to be presented here only as on the threshold of the World’s History.
Not only Hegel thinks so, but some contemporary philosophers, as well. Take an example of an Oxford University professor Hugh Trevor-‐Roper who echoed Hegel over a century later when he stated Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at the present there is none; there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness, and darkness is not the subject of history (Trevor-‐Roper 1964:9).
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This «otherisation sin» is exactly what Rosemann (1998) refers to in his Africa as the Other of the West. Due to the “otherisation sin”, there is little room that education takes into serious consideration the context of the people, on one hand, and on the other hand, there is little room to make comparisons for searching for what is proper and/or improper for the people in which it is transmitted. For instance, a comparison like this one below about African education and Western can hardly be done with the “otherisation sin” in action. Philosophy Content Objectives Costs Dispensers Duration Context Approach Methodology Place
African Education Communitarian Relevant/integral For life Free Community/members Through out life Natural and social Inclusive Flexible Where need arises
Western School Education Rather individualistic Often irrelevant Often for jobs Too expensive “Special” people For periods Artificial Discriminatory Not very flexible Buildings
Source: Kanyandago 1998:145 In actual fact, those who try to make such comparisons are considered poor in thinking. The comparison cannot be done simply because the Western school education, which is result of the western rationales, babies of the western reason from the Enlightenment, is what education is; what is not that is not education! Such comparison and discussions for policy orientation would be very crucial for contextualising education for the African young man and woman, for instance. Weird role models Due to lack of contextualisation of education, given the universalising character of modernity leading to the “otherisation sin”, the African youth has been condemned to looking at, admiring, working with, and collaborating with weird models who have come from this western school of education, with pretence of neutrality. Such weird role models do not mind and respect others; they do not have a sense of promotion of the other, but his/her exploitation. According to Mataze (1998:154), this kind of education has promoted weird role models who are decisively anti-‐people: … civil servants who do not serve civil society but serve their own needs first; politicians who speak, but say nothing; voters who vote but do not elect; a media which misinforms; schools where they teach how to ignore;
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members of the judiciary who sentence victims and take bribes; a military that is always at war with the citizens it is meant to protect; a police force that cannot fight crime because it is busy committing crime; … money which happens to be freer than people, and people who serve things.
The list of such weird role models could be longer: religious people who instead of preaching God for heaven, preach God for their appetites; doctors who instead of saving life, destroy it; engineers who construct collapsing buildings and pothole-‐friendly roads; business people who sell junk instead of goods, and; ethicists without ethics. And all these are the role models for the youths! These weird role models respond to the unquenchable desire to accumulate and consume. In such role models, there is realisation of commodification tendencies, among others (Deleuze & Guattari 1983:88), with mobile, unmappable, and excessive demands over and above appetites for satisfaction. There is no wonder that such role models are not needed because they are decisively anti-‐people and therefore there is a need to engage in processes to get pro-‐people role models. Revival of shame One of the factors behind the formation of the anti-‐people role models is linked to the methodological orientation in the transmission of education in universities, which is modernity-‐oriented: rational-‐based, ignoring as much as it can the emotional elements in the human being. Such methodological orientation leads to giving students existing knowledge of intellectuals from the modernity frameworks, intellectuals who generate ready-‐made knowledges to be assumed and consumed by the young people, knowledges which become part of the off-‐the-‐shelf solutions geared towards addressing already defined-‐ problems by modernity (Kamanzi 2007). More still, this methodological orientation has ignored a critical moment related to postmodernism: the deconstructionist methodology that has resulted into pluralistic epistemologies, with the biggest tools of questioning and deconstructing the established truths of modernity. The giving of ready-‐made knowledges and off-‐the-‐shelf solutions for consumption and the lack of critical approaches to open spaces for pluralistic epistemologies stifle methodological approaches that promote creativity by teachers and students in universities. The tendency and practice, thus, becomes
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that of repeatedly thinking and applying in terms of what is there already. Little or no effort is directed towards getting new approaches in problematising and solution seeking. An important dimension to mention with regard to modernity is the moral question. The problem of moral principles stemming from modernity is on the development of universally binding ethical rules and principles, which in most cases ignore the centrality to morality of the varieties of human character, the situated and social human self. In this kind of situation, the modern morality misinterprets human morality by arguing that that there are discoverable and trans-‐cultural universal rules for guiding conduct, on the one hand, and that the greatest human good is his/her perfect autonomy, on the other hand (Williams 1981; 1985). It is within this kind of conception of morality by modernity that, for instance, emotions are ignored and the related aspects such as shame. According to Hutchinson (2008), shame is linked to the reductionist accounts of emotion, leading to a poor understanding of our world and ourselves. Shame can be described as the consciousness or awareness of dishonour, disgrace, or condemnation; it is a painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, or unworthiness. To put it in the words of Bradshaw (1988), shame is an emotion that would lead each one to knowing his/her finiteness, that is, not perfect. With modernity, shame gets a negative connotation, being part of the inheritance of the Greek thinking. According to Sokolon (2004), in the Greek understanding of shame, if someone wanted to be an expert concerning justice, the person was supposed to act without the constraint of shame and concern for his/her reputation with the people because if one remained constrained by shame and reputation, this person would equally remain constrained by notions of customs. Tarnopolsky (2007), even though from another perspective of aesthetics, argues that the analysis of shame in Plato shows how the psychological forces at the heart of shame make the outcome of our political engagements with others uncertain and unsettling, even while they make possible the kind of self-‐ reflexivity necessary to foster the deliberative virtue of sincerity or truthfulness. In a very postmodern manner, Williams (1992) demonstrates how modern moral consciousness itself is inconsistent and based on illusions about human action: he shows
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how if the conception of morality of the Greek is considered collectively, there is an imminent conclusion that urges us to reject our inclination to look at shame as a childish, pre-‐moral emotion, and the thinking that moral freedom and responsibility require complete overcoming of all necessity. According to him, if shame is properly understood, it is a very good thing because there is a possibility of accepting a degree of necessity without bowing to fate. While being critical of modern morality, however, the process of looking for alternatives should not be like throwing the dirty water together with the washed baby in the basin: what appears good from modernity can always be carried along; what appears improvable, can always be improved, and what appears bad should be thrown away. This implies that questioning and deconstructing should go hand in hand with other constructions, a typical post-‐postmodern mood which is an expression of recognition and acknowledgement of the positives and the negatives of modernity and postmodernism, but more thrusted towards constructing something from deconstructed realities. It is for this reason that within the post-‐postmodern perspective whereby the ethos is that one of handling “deconstructions” and “constructions” simultaneously this article argues for the revival of shame from having a negative modern connotation to a positive connotation. This revival deals, more specifically, with the affective that gives growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude), as one of the three basic areas of learning, others being the cognitive, and the psychomotor, according to Bloom (1956). The revival is necessary because much as most African universities have been embedded in straight jackets of modernity for a long time, they are, as well, uncomfortable with the oversized jackets of postmodernism, and now more troubled with the new constructions of post-‐ postmodernism in trying to educate the young people. The question is how shame can methodologically be incorporated in the education of the youths at University level, for instance. Among the Haya people, there is an expression: bakaw’enshoni, literally meaning, “they no more have shame”. This expression is used in cases when someone does something that he/she is not supposed to do and does not feel ashamed or has no guilt. Shame, in this respect, is positive because it assists someone into a reflection of his/her conduct. The argument is, therefore, that the role models that are
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decisively anti-‐people have lost this kind of shame; they have lost a point to trigger reflection on their lives and that is why they simply act never minding about their actions in themselves and their general and specific effects. The revival of the sense of shame in the young people in universities can be done during the teaching interfaces. Not only should a facilitator give dry notions from academic books about the concepts on the subject matter, but also a facilitator should always get life stories that give accounts of “shameful/unshameful” people. In Williams’ (1992:95), words there is need to distinguish between “a shame that merely followed public opinion and a shame that expressed inner personal conviction". This implies that such accounts of shame should be able to assist the young people to distinguish between the idea of shame as mere social conformity and shame as self-‐respect.
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Conclusion Youths are human beings whose imaginations and the real world are constructions in progress. And this is the basic reason as to why a youth needs a role model. Due to the “otherisation sin” of modernity, there has been a formation of weird role models for the youths. These are shameless role models who have been decisively anti-‐people because modernity praised the role of reason over and above emotions. In order to have the pro-‐people role models, it is necessary to revive the sense of shame so that one’s personal character can develop with the social values. The process of facilitation of young people to become pro-‐people role models should be done through incorporation of life stories and events that stimulate the youths into thinking about shame in the line of self-‐respect other than shame as mere social conformity. The facilitator should give notions from academic, but also life stories that give accounts that can have interpretations that have to do with shame. Not only should students be given notions from books and accounts leading to interpretations to do with shame, but students should also be introduced into self-‐ confronting methodologies to pull out their imaginations and emotions, elements that would lead to the flourishing of their potentialities and creativities. For example, it is time that students are given life situations to view and are asked to compose their own questions and respond to them; it is time for students to be asked to give informed value judgements on life situations.
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