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Editorial
" Poverty is caused by malnutrition and over-population."
"There is really no comparison between our society and life out there."
"Aid is being misued and must be stopped."
These are typical comments abstracted from the scripts of secondary school children who were taking the World Development 'AO' Level examination this year. They show that we have a long way to go n making people aware of the interdependence of nations, as highlighted by the Brandt Report, and in making people aware of the complex causes of poverty. A survey published by the then Ministry of Overseas Development in 1977 on British attitudes to overseas countries indicated an appalling ignorance of world events and the relationship between the U.K. and the rest of the world. This, despite the fact that Britain has been and remains largely dependent on overseas trade for its livelihood.
The predominant view seems to be that it is other countries that are at fault and there is other no recognition that it may only be certain groups within such countries or certain taken-for-granted relationships which result in the uneven distribution of assets and resources. Peasants are backward because they are ignorant and do not pratice birth control. Blacks are a problem in the inner cities because they won't integrate or are unemployed. There seems to be little thought given to the more fundamental questions about why they are unemployed, or why they should 'integrate' or, in fact, what 'integration' might mean especially if its terms are defined by a white, insular society.
Nationalism as a force for mobilising people has re-emerged as an important tool. While one might feel that such a tool has serve to separate rather integrate; it focuses on uniqueness and conjures up images of past glory which reinforce attitudes of superiority. For those working for a more equal distribution of resources, the reemergence of such comcepts and a concentration on the forms of poverty, rather than on the processes which give rise to poverty, can only be perceived as a retrogade step.
The 'AO' level scripts provide evidence of the ways in which 16 year olds feel about the world. While the evidence cannot be treated as representative, the overwhelming impression of the 'underdeveloped' countires of the world is of how qualitatively different life there is from life in this country. There appears to be little appreciation of the similarity of the processes of enrichment and empoverishment that shape the international economy. Comparisons between this country and other countries cannot therefore be made. It is as if we live in separate universe.
The views of 16 year olds are not, of course, necessarily representative and are based on a very restricted and not-yet-formed view of the world, but they do emphasise the enormity of the tasks confronting those engaged in development studies in getting people to question a world which is largely accepted without question and is based on received knowledge rather than related to actual experience. As long as development studies concentrates on people 'out there', the problems of the world and the UK's place in that world can be kept at arm's length.
It is perhaps in the end invidious to isolate attitudes within the U.K. because similar attitudes are perpetuated and reinforced in other countries of the world, be they the other parts of the industrial world, the socialist countires or underdeveloped countires. We are all under-developed, when it comes to thinking about the problems of inter-dependence in a rapidly changing world.
Charles Gore & David Marsden