The right to literacy and cultural change: Zulu adolescents in post-apartheid South Africa

THE RIGHT TO LITERACY AND CULTURAL CHANGE

The right to literacy and cultural change:

Zulu adolescents in post-apartheid rural South Africa

Kathryn Day

University of California, Berkeley

Graduate School of Education, Tolman Hall, Berkeley, CA, US 94720

[email protected]

Correspondence address: Kathryn Day, 432 N. Market Street, Salem,

VA 241533074 Bateman Street, Berkeley, CA 94705

Telephone: +1 (510) 705-8797

This research was submitted in partial fulfillment of the

doctoral degree requirements for the University of California,

Berkeley. Some data were presented at the Jean Piaget Society

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mailto:[email protected]


Conference in Park City, Utah, June 2009, and at the Jean Piaget

Society Conference in Toronto, Ontario, CA, in June 2012.

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Abstract

This study examined the conceptions of the right to literacy

of rural Zulu adolescents in post-apartheid South Africa. Its aim

was to investigate the development of human rights in a

traditional society during an era of historic change. Adolescents

in three age groups (N = 72, Mage = 11:1, 15:9, and 18:9)

endorsed the right in the general (100%) and three formal

defining criteria (92%–100%). In nine conflict assessments

involving the preservation of culture, parental authority, and

gender roles, they supported the right to literacy (64%–100%),

but also maintained traditional values of respect and duties of

elder care. Twenty-four percent proposed novel concepts

integrating the right to literacy with indigenous practices such

as family decision-making processes. These findings suggest that

conceptions of rights and collectivistic values need not be

antagonistic. It is argued that analyses of the ontogenesis,

cultural practices, and historical settings of conceptions of

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human rights may be integral to resolving questions of

universalism.

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Human rights were assigned universal status by international

consensus in response to the atrocities of the Second World War.

Yet, the question of whether human rights are understood and

valued across cultures remains in dispute. “Non-Western”

countries such as India and South Africa contain many tribal

societies whose ethical systems sometimes conflict with human

rights (Kaime, 2005; Armstrong et al., 1995). Little is known

about how members of these groups appraise their rights. There is

disagreement, with theoretical and ethical implications for

philosophy, political science, and cultural and moral psychology,

over whether human rights are native to these groups, or imposed

upon them (Bielefeldt, 2000; Helwig, 2006; Sen, 1997; Shweder,

2012). Cognitive developmental psychologists can make a

substantive contribution to this problem by investigating

conceptions of human rights in traditional groups in their

transition to rights-based democratic systems. Accordingly, this

study investigates one such instance: the development of the

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right to literacy of rural Zulu adolescents of South Africa,

members of the first post-apartheid generation. It examines their

appraisals of the principles that define the right to literacy,

and their judgments of situated conflicts between literacy and

their own cultural values and practices.

Are rights part of the non-Western world? Many cultural

theorists dispute their legitimacy outside the West, arguing that

rights contradict key values in the worldviews of Africans and

Asians. They assert that a culture’s position on an

individualistic/collectivistic continuum frames the cognitions

and emotions of its members (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis,

2001). Rights exemplify an emphasis on the autonomous individual

that is antipathetic to the core belief of collectivism, namely,

that the needs of the self should be subordinated to those of the

community (Miller, 2005). In this approach, collectivistic

cultures, when exposed to Western values, undergo a global change

towards individualism (Haidt, 2012; Kitayama, Conway,

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Pietromonaco, Park, & Plaut, 2010), eroding their original

position.

Other variations on cultural determinism include pluralistic

theories in which one type of morality predominates in any given

culture (Haidt, 2012; Jensen, 2008). For example, in one tri-

partite theory (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997), the

Ethic of Autonomy includes the well-being of individuals,

fairness, and rights; the Ethic of Community, duties to others,

customs, and group welfare; and the Ethic of Divinity,

spirituality. Rights are more salient in Autonomy-based cultures

such as the US and Northern Europe than in Africa and Asia.

By contrast, social domain theory, a cognitive-developmental

perspective, includes psychological conceptions of rights in a

moral domain with a developmental pathway distinct from that of

social conventions (Turiel, 1983). In this view, conceptions of

rights develop in non-Western and Western cultures alike. In

accord with this premise, high proportions of endorsement have

been reported for conceptions of rights amongst adolescent Druze

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Arabs in Israel (Turiel & Wainryb, 1998) and Mainland Chinese

adolescents (Lahat et al., 2008). Culture plays a role in the

degree to which rights are subordinated to local values such as

authority. But this is also dependent on context and on the

particular right involved.

As well, proposed here is the exploration of the psychology

of human rights in relation to history and to cultural practices.

The development of a concept that first received recognition in

1948 must be investigated in terms of time and place as well as

the individual. Data collection for this study took place in 2008

in South Africa, as the first generation of post-apartheid

students were preparing to leave school. This study therefore

presented an unusual opportunity to learn something of the

interplay between adolescent moral development, traditional

social practices, and an era of historic transition. In general,

adolescents come to understand the alterability of social

conventions and their purpose in facilitating social interactions

(Turiel, 1983). Given their knowledge of both indigenous and

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modern worlds, adolescents in cultural transition may aspire to

reform their traditions to bring them into accord with their aims

for the future (Erikson, 1968). To examine this possibility, a

developmental cognitive-historical framework (Saxe, 1999, 2012;

Saxe & Esmonde, 2012) was used where appropriate. The preliminary

nature of such interpretations is acknowledged.

In sum, this study on conceptions of rights in a traditional

society in transition built on previous research from the

constructivist perspective on conceptions of rights and on

cultural change. Its setting was two rural Zulu communities. The

particular right was the right to literacy, a critical requisite

for social and economic growth in rural communities. The

sociology and history of this region and the advantages of

literacy are pertinent to this study and are discussed below.

The first prediction for this study, based on social

constructivist theory and in contrast to cultural psychological

theories, was assessed through questions about the right to

literacy in abstract terms. It was that the right to literacy in

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the abstract would be endorsed by a majority of this population,

and that their endorsements would be grounded on the contribution

of literacy to their own need for economic and social

development, and not in terms of cultural compatibility.

Assessments of the right to literacy in context were also

undertaken. These were intended to be exploratory. They were

novel in that, rather than enacting prototypical interactions of

rights with other moral concepts such as harm, they were designed

to investigate the most common real-world practices that stood as

obstacles to children’s literacy in the developing world. These

practices, including the preservation of culture, parental

authority, children’s obedience, and male-preference gender

norms, represented cultural values to which many traditional

societies have shown a substantial commitment.

1. Method

1.1. Participants

Participants were drawn from the primary and secondary

schools of Stepmore and Lotheni in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

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There were three age groups of twelve males and twelve females

each, 10–11 year olds (Mage = 11–1, range 9–11 to 11–7), 15–16

year olds (Mage = 15–9, range 15–1 to 16–7), and 18–21 year olds

(Mage = 18–9, range 18–0 to 20–11). The 10-11 year olds came from

the fourth and fifth years of primary school. The two older

groups attended the fifth and sixth forms (the upper two classes)

of secondary school.

All the participants were ethnic Zulus. Their home language

and language of instruction at school was isiZulu; they learnt

English as a second language at school. Students were recruited

on a voluntary basis through talks given by the translators in

isiZulu at their schools, and virtually all the students of

appropriate ages chose to take part in the study.

1.2. Setting

Zulu tribal society was originally based on an agnatic

economy and an ethos of intergenerational care. Social practices

in Stepmore and Lotheni at the time of the study retained many

traditional features such as proximal extended family life,

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formal respect relations, and gendered work roles (Cichello,

2003; Moller & Sotshongaye, 1998), which would define these

village societies as collectivistic.

Kwa-Zulu Natal, the homeland of the Zulu tribe, was a very

poor area. Unemployment levels were approximately 45%. Adults

typically engaged in a mixture of subsistence farming, cattle

herding, street trading, and irregular waged farm labor for

around 2 US$/hour. Many households reported a lack of food

security (Cichello, Fields, & Leibbrandt, 2003; Mtshali, 2002).

The introduction of schools in the late 1990s made radical

demands on Zulu social organization. Literacy, a primary product

of schooling, is one of the “certain especially important objects

or goods” (Gewirth, 1982) that qualify it as a human right. It

provides access to the vocabulary and content of written

knowledge (Stanovich, 2000) and supports the financial

independence and social status of girls and women (Okin, 2003;

Sen, 1990). For rural Zulu youth, literacy meant jobs – even

professional aspirations. However, the introduction of the

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schools brought disequilibration to the traditional system. The

right to literacy challenged norms of parental authority.

Children, as students, were absented from family labor, subjected

to school authority, and prepared to leave home to work. They had

access to knowledge that their parents did not. Traditional

gender norms were overturned as “son preferences” were superseded

by equal opportunity regulations.

1.2.1. Stepmore and Lotheni.

Lotheni was a dispersed community of hill-farmers; Stepmore,

a densely populated village. Both were accessible by dirt roads,

with no public utilities. Women gathered wood and carried water

for their households.

The Lotheni/Stepmore Zulus excluded English loanwords from

their language, isiZulu. My Lotheni translator said, “We speak the

best isiZulu here. But your translators’ [academic linguists]

isiZulu is also very pure.” Zulus typically used tropes to avoid

loanwords, calling their cellphones umakhalekhukhwini, “screaming

in the pocket”.

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Before 1994 there was one small primary school in Stepmore

and none in Lotheni. Their “Bantu” school curriculum was designed

to exclude education about rights and to limit literacy skills

(Kallaway, 1984). A literacy survey of the area at the end of the

apartheid era found a ratio of literate to illiterate people of

about 1:18 (Moulder & Krige, 1994). The new government

implemented a broad rural education program. In the late 1990s, a

second primary school in Stepmore, the first primary school in

Lotheni, and high schools (Grades 8-12) for both villages were

built. In 1996, a new Bill of Rights was ratified. By 2008, a

Stepmore headteacher estimated that 85% of local primary-school

aged children attended school.

1.3. Design

The methodology of this study was adapted from previous

studies on rights from the social domain perspective (Helwig,

1995, 1997). It employed a two-part design: the first evaluated

rights in the abstract; the second evaluated the right in

hypothetical conflicts with traditional values.

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1.3.1. Abstract assessments.

The assessments on the right to literacy in the abstract

provided information on participants’ evaluations of the right in

the general. Then, in simple language, they assessed certain

defining criteria of human rights (Gewirth, 1982). They included:

(a) An assessment of the right in general, avoiding the leading

use of the word “right”: “Do you think that each and every child

should have the chance to learn to read?”; (b) An assessment on

whether the right to literacy should be extended to every

individual regardless of characteristics such as gender

(generalizability), “Do you think that everyone should have the chance

to learn to read, irrespective of nationality, whether they are

boys or girls, or how rich they may be?”; (c) An assessment on

whether breaking a law that violated the right to literacy was

justified (law violation), “If a law in a country forbids certain

children from learning to read, for example, girls or a certain

race, is it better to obey that law, or is it better to break

it?”; and (d) An assessment on whether a duty holder had a moral

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obligation to ensure that the resources needed to fulfill this

right were provided, especially to the poor (correlativity), the

government duty assessment, “Must every government, all over the

world, give every child the chance to learn to read?”.

1.3.2. Conflict assessments.

These assessments comprised three sets of three questions

each, including one general question and two hypothetical

scenarios; the first set concerned questions about the

preservation of culture; the second, parental authority; and the

third, gender issues.

The culture assessments included: (a) a general assessment,

“Is culture more important or is learning to read more important,

if you have to choose?”; (b) an oral culture assessment, “There is a

group of people who do not use reading or writing in any

way . . . . Do you think the group should choose to let their

children learn to read, or should the children learn their oral

culture?”; and (c) a traditional skills assessment, “There is a child .

. . so busy with school that he does not have time to learn his

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family’s skill, building furniture. Do you think his parents

should choose for the child to learn to read, or learn his

traditional skills?”.

The parental authority assessments included: (a) a parental

prohibition assessment, “If parents forbid a child to learn to read,

is that all right?”; (b) a children’s obedience assessment, “If parents

forbid a child to learn to read no matter what is said or done, should the

child obey the parents, or disobey?”; and (c) a children’s labor

assessment, “If parents think that children are needed to work at

home, and keep the children at home instead of sending them to

school, is that all right?”

The gender assessments included: (a) the general question,

“Should boys and girls have the same opportunities to learn to

read?”; (b) an assessment on the governmental protection of girls,

“In a different country, some families and villages do not allow

their girls to learn to read. But the government does not protect

the girls from this. Is that all right?”; and (c) one on family

poverty, “In a country where it costs money to send children to

learn to read, a family has two boys and two girls, but they can

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only afford to send two children to school. Therefore they choose

to send the boys and not the girls. Is that all right?”

The interview protocol asked for responses in terms of

evaluations (yes or no), and justifications, rationales for the

evaluations. Each assessment included the main question and then

the question, “Why do you think so?”, to obtain the

justification. Multiple justifications were allowed.

Justifications supporting endorsements of the right to literacy

are listed in Table 1, and those supporting cultural

preservation, parental authority, or gender, in Table 2.

An analysis of the ratio of individualistic justifications

to collectivistic justifications was planned to provide a single

overarching measure using this hypothetical dichotomy. Social

domain theory (Turiel, 1983) and the cultural-developmental

template approach (Jensen, 2008) are in rough accord in

distinguishing these two categories of values. Individualistic

justifications included references to goods for the individual,

such as cognitive-communicative abilities, developmental and

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specific benefits; moral statements referring to justice, welfare

or rights, as these concern relations between individuals; and

traits such as individuality and autonomy. Collectivistic

justifications included references to goods for the family,

community, and nation; the preservation of culture; gender roles;

and hierarchical values such as authority, duty, and respect for

elders.

1.4. Procedure

The assessments were single semi-structured interviews

conducted on a one-to-one basis at the participants’ schools.

These interviews, lasting around twenty to forty minutes, were

held with the researcher and one of three translators, who were

native speakers of isiZulu and members of the villages. The

questions were given in isiZulu but the student responses were

immediately translated into English, so that the researcher could

assess them.

The isiZulu interview protocol, assent, and consent forms

were translated from English and back translated by two native

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speaker graduate students for accuracy. Parental informed

consent was obtained using oral scripts or written forms in

isiZulu. Consent forms for minor participants were signed by

parents prior to the interviews; child assent forms for

participants aged 10–11 or 15–16 and adult consent forms for

participants aged 18–21 were provided at the interview. The

study design was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB)

of the University of California at Berkeley and the University of

KwaZulu Natal Research Review Board in Durban, South Africa.

In the interviews, (a) the translator read the introduction

and questions from the interview protocol verbatim, in isiZulu;

(b) the student responded in isiZulu; (c) the translator gave the

response in English so that the researcher was able to assess the

participants’ comprehension and whether their responses were

clear and pertinent. If necessary, (d) the researcher then

clarified the question or posed probes which were then translated

into isiZulu for the participant, returning to point (b) in the

process.

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The interviews were electronically recorded and transcribed

for analysis.

1.4.1. Coding and reliability.

The coding system was based on two systems used for prior

research on morality, social conventions, and rights (Davidson,

Turiel & Black, 1983; Helwig, 1991). Thirty per cent of the

interview protocols, equal numbers from each sex x age group,

were randomly selected to develop the coding manual for this

study. The coding system was then used on the remaining 70% of

the data. Both portions were combined for analysis.

An independent scorer trained in the use of the coding

system and blind to age and sex of the participants and purposes

of the study scored 12 randomly chosen interviews (two males and

two females from each age group). The resulting inter-rater

agreement (Cohen’s ) was = .98 for the evaluations and = .82

for the justifications.

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2. Results

The results of the abstract and conflict assessments are

presented with within- and between-assessment analyses.

Preliminary analyses showed no significant effects for sex, so

data for males and females were collapsed for all subsequent

analyses. Univariate ANOVAs (age group x assessment) were used to

assess developmental trends. Post hoc comparisons on significant

results were performed using Tukey’s HSD test, with the critical

value set at p < .05.

2.1. Evaluations

These assessments are reported as percentages. Means and

standard deviations were reported on a scale where 0 = the right

to literacy was not endorsed, 1 = ambivalent endorsement, and 2 =

positive endorsement.

2.1.1. Abstract assessments.

The results of the abstract assessments (p. 16) confirmed

the first prediction of the study that a majority of participants

would support the right to literacy in the abstract. The general,

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generalizability, and government duty assessments were fully

endorsed in all age groups (100%). The law violation assessment

received 92% endorsement, with 5% negative and 3% ambivalent

responses (M = 1.86, SD = .48). A univariate ANOVA found no

significant effects of age. The criterion for a participant’s

endorsement of the right to literacy was set as the positive

endorsement of all these assessments of formal criteria for

rights. Ninety-two percent met this criteria.

2.1.2. Conflict assessments.

2.1.2.1. Evaluations of conflicts with culture.

In all three culture assessments (p. 17), literacy was

endorsed by a majority of the participants. For the question on

culture in the general, the participants interpreted culture as

home-based activities or as “ancestor practices”, rituals to

honor deceased relatives. Eighty-three percent of the

participants endorsed literacy, 11% endorsed culture, and 6% were

ambivalent (M = 1.72, SD = .59).

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For the assessment of oral culture, 89% endorsed literacy,

8% endorsed an oral culture, and 3% were ambivalent (M = 1.81, SD

= .57); and for the assessment of a traditional skill, 93%

endorsed literacy, 4% endorsed the traditional skill, and 3% were

ambivalent (M = 1.90, SD = .42). Univariate ANOVAs (age group x

assessment) performed on each assessment showed no significant

effects of age for any of the evaluations. A comparison of the

means of the abstract assessments and culture assessments, using

a repeated-measure GLM with assessment set (abstract or culture)

as the repeated measure, demonstrated that the culture set was

endorsed significantly less often than the abstract set, F (4,

67) = 11.52, p = .0012, 2 = .60.

2.1.2.2. Evaluations of conflicts with parental authority.

In the assessments on parental authority (p. 18), one

hundred percent of participants opposed parents’ forbidding their

children to read, and 97% opposed taking children out of school

to work (M = 1.95, SD = .28). However, only 64% of participants

thought children should disobey their parents if forbidden to

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learn to read, with 35% endorsing obedience to parents and 1%

ambivalent (M = 1.40, SD = .91). Again, ANOVAs (age group x

assessment) on each assessment showed no significant effects of

age. A repeated-measure GLM, with assessment set as the repeated

measure, showed that the mean percentage of the abstract

assessments (97%) was significantly greater than those on

parental authority (81%), F (4, 60) = 9.22, p < .001, 2 = .42.

2.1.2.3. Evaluations of conflicts with gender roles.

In the gender assessments (p. 18), a large majority of

participants endorsed equal opportunities for literacy in every

assessment. For the equal opportunity assessment, 96% endorsed

equal opportunity, with 3% favoring gender discrimination, and 1%

ambivalent (M = 1.93, SD = .35); 96% endorsed government

protection, with 4% negative (M = 1.96, SD = .20); and 89%

endorsed gender equality in a poor family, with 11% endorsing

gender discrimination in this situation (M = 1.77, SD = .64).

Again, univariate ANOVAs for each assessment showed no

significant effects of age. The mean of the evaluations of the

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gender assessments was significantly less than that of the

abstract set, as shown by a repeated-measure ANOVA with

assessment set as the repeated measure, F (4, 66) = 4.73, p =

.002, 2 = .23.

2.2. Justifications

Tables 3 and 4 show the justifications for the abstract and

conflict assessments, respectively. The threshold for reporting

was set at 10%, so that two categories, Progress and Historical

Awareness, were dropped from the analysis. Each conflict

assessment was compared with the abstract assessment most similar

to it: For example, as the generalizability (abstract) assessment

bore on non-discrimination, it was the basis of comparison for

the gender assessments.

2.2.1. Justifications for abstract assessments.

Table 3 presents the percentages of the justifications for

the abstract assessments (for examples, see Table 1).

Analyses of the general and generalizability assessments

revealed no significant effects of age group. The law violation

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assessment showed a significant age-related decrease in the use

of cognitive/communicative justifications, F (2, 69) = 4.53, p =

.014, p2 = .12, with post-hoc tests showing a significant

decrease between the 10-11 year olds and 15-16 year olds. For

the government duty assessment, the use of correlativity

increased significantly with age, F (2, 69) = 4.19, p = .019, p2

= .11, with post-hoc results showing the 15-16 year olds

significantly more likely to use correlativity justifications

than the other two age groups. The proportions of

cognitive/communicative justifications showed a significant

decrease with age, F (2, 69) = 4.24, p = .018, p2 = .11 with

post-hoc results showing significant decreases between the 10-11

year olds and both older groups.

2.2.2. Justifications for conflict assessments.

Table 4 shows the percentages of the justifications

grounding endorsements for literacy in the conflict assessments.

The justifications for the general abstract assessment (in

italics) are included for comparison. When cultural practices

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predominated in a conflict, corresponding justifications were

produced promoting elements of culture, parental authority, and

gender discrimination. The numbers of these were small, and they

are summarized in the text.

2.2.2.1. Justifications for the culture assessments.

The culture assessments included the general, oral, and

traditional skill assessments (p. 17). Cognitive/communicative

functions and specified benefits were most common. Notably, there

were very few moral justifications for any of the assessments

(<2%). In the general culture assessment, specified benefits

(48%) emphasized jobs; cognitive/communicative abilities (20%)

emphasized knowledge. The percentages of the developmental,

cognitive/communicative, and specified benefits justifications

were not significantly different from those of the abstract

general assessment. In the oral culture assessment, the high

percentage of cognitive/communicative justifications (49%)

captured a focus on making written records. There were

significantly more of these in the oral culture responses than

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the general abstract responses, F (1, 69) = 49.97, p < .001, p2

= .18. The traditional skills assessment had significantly more

developmental justifications than the abstract assessment, F (1,

69) = 30.88, p < .001, p2 = .20.

The justifications supporting the value of culture included

the importance of preserving culture for its own sake; retaining

particular values such as respect; and sustaining ancestor practices,

rituals honoring departed spirits who would reciprocate by

protecting their living relatives. Of the small number

supporting culture in these conflict situations, eleven endorsed

culture in terms of the protective value of ancestor practices,

and five, preserving culture for its own sake.

2.2.2.2. Justifications for the parental authority assessments.

There were two main groups of justifications for these

assessments (p. 18). The first was a large number of

developmental justifications capturing the participants’

disapproval of parental interference with children’s development.

There were significantly more developmental justifications for

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all three assessments in comparison to the abstract general

assessment: For the parental prohibition assessment, F (1, 69) =

18.29, p <. 001, p2 = .21; for the children’s obedience

assessment, F (1, 69) = 10.18, p < .002, p2 = .13, and for the

children’s labor assessment, F (1, 69) = 25.55, p = < .001, p2

= .27.

The second largest group of justifications, comprising 37%

of the justifications for literacy in the children’s obedience

assessment, were unique to the parental authority assessments and

were termed authority restrictions. Ten responses coordinated and

delimited obedience in respect to children’s literacy, while

seven proposed allowing discussion about rights in traditional

negotiating practices (for examples, see Table 1).

The evaluations favoring parental authority (35%) were

grounded in two justifications: respect (71%) and coercion (29%).

There was a significant decrease of respect justifications with

age, F (2, 69) = 5.84, p = .009, p2 = .33. Post-hoc tests showed

that there were significant fewer responses both between 18-21

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year olds and 15-16 year olds, and between 18-21 year olds and

10-11 year olds.

2.2.2.3. Justifications for the gender assessments.

Although over 90% of the participants endorsed each gender

assessment (p. 18), their justifications for doing so varied

widely. For the family poverty assessment, univariate ANOVAs

revealed a significant decrease with age in the use of

developmental justifications, F (2, 69) = 3.99, p = .023, p2

= .10. There was also an age-related increase in family/community

justifications, F (2, 69) = 3.51, p = .035, p2 = .092, with post-

hocs showing a significant increase for the 18-21 year age group

over the 10-11 year age group.

The largest proportions of justice justifications in the

study were produced in these assessments. A repeated-measure GLM

was used with the justice justifications for the generalizability

assessment and each gender assessment as a within-subject factor,

and age as the between-subject factor. Every comparison found a

significant effect by assessment, but not age. For the equal

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opportunity assessment, F (1, 69) = 73.42, p < .001, p2 = .52; for

the government protection assessment, F (1, 69) = 12.59, p

< .001, p2 = .15; and for the family poverty assessment, F (1,

69) = 4.28, p < .042, p2 = .058.

The justifications for negative responses for the gender

assessments were of two kinds: of sixteen in total, twelve were

gender attributes or assertions that one or the other sex would be

more likely to succeed in school, either denigrating boys for

being irresponsible and drunkards or girls for getting pregnant.

Four were gender roles or “son preferences”.

2.2.3. Ratio of individualistic to collectivistic justifications.

Table 5 presents the ratio of individualistic justifications

to collectivistic justifications, which was approximately 5:1. A

Fisher’s exact test comparing these proportions to equal

proportions was significant, p < .001.

3. Discussion

This study investigated the conceptions of the right to

literacy of Zulu adolescents in post-apartheid South Africa.

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Assessments on the right in the abstract yielded very high

percentages of endorsements (p. 23), equal to or higher than

those found for civil liberties in the U.S. (Helwig, 1995) and

children’s rights in urban South Africa (Ruck, Tenenbaum, &

Willenberg, 2011). These results stood in sharp contrast to

anthropological and cultural psychological predictions for human

rights in collectivistic societies (Shweder, 2012).

Moreover, these responses also displayed congruence with a

Western philosophical model of the logical structure and content

of human rights (Gewirth, 1982). The high percentage of

endorsement for the law violation assessment by the 10-11 year

old group (92%) was particularly notable. The understanding that

moral principles supersede social convention has long been

recognized as a milestone in the development of autonomous moral

thinking (Kohlberg, 1971; Turiel, 1983), but previous findings

had indicated law violations involving the civil liberties were

often not endorsed by a majority until late adolescence (Helwig,

1997). Kohlberg posited that developing world village children

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rarely, if ever, reached achieved post-conventional, or

autonomous, moral development. The early attainment found here

may be partly due to the fact that this is a right of provision,

also termed a nurturance right (Peterson-Badali & Ruck, 2008),

and not a civil liberty, for which endorsements typically

increase with age. Regardless, this finding weighs against moral

determinism by type of social organization.

According to Gewirth (1982) human rights protect essential

needs for agency; these were consistently identified in the

justifications for the endorsements for literacy, for example, as

means to get a job, to gain knowledge, and to promote

development. While schoolteachers advocated for literacy in these

terms, and children in school could substantiate gender equality

by witnessing boys’ and girls’ academic abilities, students were

struggling with acquiring basic skills in these remote rural

schools. Teachers certainly did not provide the formal criteria

of morality that were so consistently employed. As well, the

ratio of individualistic to collectivistic justifications shows

35


that these conceptions were grounded upon individual

entitlements, although they were also seen as promoting

interdependent interests. Hence the content of the justifications

and the endorsement of law violation, generalizability and

correlativity together support a constructivist model of the

development of these moral conceptions.

At the same time, the proportions of both abstract and

conflict justifications also suggested a continuity of the right

to literacy with indigenous values. The value of children’s

development was the most common justification for literacy over

all of the assessments (21.7%). But this was in agreement with

strong African traditions affirming the importance of childhood

(Kaime, 2005; Keller, 2003). Interviews with village parents may

confirm that they recognized education as a novel application of

their own values, so that an established tradition served as a

precursor to a human rights conception.

The right to literacy received high endorsements in the

conflict assessments, demonstrating its value in context. There

36


were patterns of relations between the assessment set and the

domain used for judgments: for assessments of culture, the

pragmatic domain; for assessments of gender, moral judgments

(justice); and for assessments of parental authority, a complex

mix of pragmatic, social, and moral domain judgments along with

“sacred” imperatives. Although the judgments for the parental

authority assessments shared content such as duty and sanctity

with cultural psychologists’ analyses of morality in family-based

non-Western societies (Haidt, 2012; Shweder, Mahapatra, & Miller,

1987), the patterns found here were on the level of social domain

and not overarching cultural orientations.

Also, the justifications unexpectedly included a number of

references to cultural practices adapted to solve novel problems,

including communicative practices, the distribution of scarce

resources, and elder care. The adolescents altered these

traditional practices in accord with rules including moral

discourse norms, civil disobedience processes, and gender

equality, although even the implicit judgment that traditional

37


norms were alterable contravened assumptions about collectivistic

societies (Shweder, Mahapatra, & Miller, 1987). These data

confirmed the importance of including analyses of cultural

practices and history in studies of this kind.

The interpretations of each assessment set follow:

For the culture assessments, the adolescents who used the

pragmatic domain consistently preferred the right to literacy to

cultural in general, evaluating conflicts between literacy and

culture in terms of development and jobs (general and traditional

skills assessments) or the advantages of making permanent records

and writing letters (oral assessment).

However, the eleven participants who invoked the sacred and

its affective benefits in their references to family practices

all chose to endorse culture. They spoke about the spiritual

benefits of ancestor practices, which involve celebrating the

memories of the deceased. The spirits honored in this way

reciprocate by looking after their living relatives from the

afterlife. These practices serve to calm anxiety during family

38


transitions such as birth and puberty, thus regulating individual

affect and social bonds (Nel, 2007).

In the parental authority assessments, no participant

endorsed parental prohibition of learning to read, with 25%

citing moral rationales. Yet 36% chose to obey their parents if

they were forbidden to learn to read, with respect cited as the

reason in seventeen out of twenty-six responses, and coercion as

the rationale for the other nine. Respect bore similarities to

ancestor practices. It had affective value: “She feels good, and

happy, and joy, if she respects her parent” (Female, 16:7). It

was considered obligatory: “The children must obey because it is

their parents that told them that” (Male, 16:1). It was supported

by references to the sacred: “I must respect them, because they

are my parents, they are the only people who choose for me to

come on this earth” (Male, 11:0). These latter justifications

maintained respect in its unaltered form.

In contrast, the authority restrictions integrated respect

and rights by delimiting the unconditional nature of traditional

39


respect. There were two subsets of these. One was theoretical;

the other proposed adapted cultural practices. The theoretical

subset provided a priori judgments: “You must obey an adult in small

things, but if she forbids you [to learn to read], you must

disobey.” (Female, 11:3). The second subset laid out rules for

discourse about conflicts about literacy. In negotiation,

relatives representing a young child, or older adolescents

representing themselves, must have an exhaustive discussion: “sit

down and talk and talk” (Male, 20:0). However if the disagreement

was not thereby resolved, disobedience was morally justified:

“But if the parents still don’t allow it, she can disobey them,

because they are taking away the rights.” (Female, 15:5) These

proposed procedures, like civil disobedience, maintained

obligations to society. They created an acceptable venue to share

information while respecting the dignity of the parents through

the use of traditional forms.

The authority restriction responses differed from simple

assertions of rights. They protected respect by rendering it

40


alterable, but only under specified conditions, thus preserving

its viability. They established the superordinate function of a

moral precept over social convention and the use of discourse as

a process of moral progress (Rawls, 1999; Sen, 2004). Hence, the

authority restriction responses exhibited an integration of the

forms and functions of both traditional practices and moral

domain rules.

The gender assessments investigated concepts of equality

which were a departure from the Zulu tradition, an agnatic system

in which the eldest son inherited the family land and enjoyed

many privileges. Yet, by 2008, girls and boys were educated in

equal numbers in South Africa (Hausmann et al., 2009).

Equality between the sexes did not extend to every

situation. The justifications for the equal opportunity

assessment showed a strong belief in equal opportunities in

education (p. 26). Responses upholding traditional gender roles

comprised less than 1% of all justifications. However, female

students were daily observed filling their large water containers

41


at the single faucet in the schoolyard after classes to carry

home, while the boys played soccer. Hence, in practice,

traditional labor practices and equal opportunity education

existed side by side.

In the assessment of family poverty, as with the responses

to the culture assessments, economic practices in the family were

consistently regarded as alterable. In the tradition of “son

preferences”, the son’s privileges were linked to the duty of

looking after his elderly parents. One out of five of the family

poverty responses reiterated the parents’ entitlement to care.

However they altered the traditional practice to one in which the

child most likely to fulfill this economic exchange should have

the privilege of going to school, whether male or female.

Alternately, almost half the participants advocated equal access

for all the children by sending one boy and one girl to school in

alternate years. The willingness of parents to alter “son

preferences” was partly due to the fact that girls were as

42


employable as boys, so that equal opportunity education was

pragmatic as well as moral.

Hence the assessments provided an overall picture in which

the Zulu adolescents defended practices that ensured the welfare

of their families and communities. The preservation of the Zulu

language in the villages suggested that that the inhabitants of

Lotheni and Stepmore exercised reflexive thought and all due

diligence in protecting their psychocultural identity, (Chandler

& Lalonde, 2004; Hallett, Chandler, & Lalonde, 2007). Yet, these

collectivistic values and their protection of key traditions did

not preclude change. The alterability of family economics, moral

concerns, and sacred beliefs for this task received consistent

treatment consistently in accord with domain criteria (Turiel,

1983). The Zulus valued the right to literacy, both because of

the wide range of benefits literacy brought to the village, and

for its ideals of equality, welfare, and children’s entitlement

to development. The accommodation of the right into their culture

43


was accomplished through its integration with existing values and

practices.

This study did not directly address problems of cultural

self-determination. It did not look at conflict situations in

which values of human rights are imposed against resistance

(Shweder, 2005). Contrary to mores in Orissa, India (Shweder,

Mahapatra, and Miller, 1987), where concepts of the sacred appear

to be pervasive and most traditions unalterable, the adolescents

of Stepmore and Lotheni regarded many traditions as alterable in

accord with moral or pragmatic criteria. Inasmuch as human rights

are endorsed in some indigenous societies, violations of self-

determination and the integration of human rights into

traditional communities must be seen as distinct problems.

The question of the universalism of human rights need not be

an enigmatic Sphinx’s riddle. It does however require definition

and nuance. The current study contributes evidence for

endorsements of a human right, and the cognitive structures that

distinguish human rights, in a non-Western culture. It suggests

44


that conceptions of human rights can co-exist with indigenous

interdependencies in a social system in which both are actively

maintained and reconciled. The role of precursive values, such as

that of children’s development, and compatible practices, such as

discursive decision-making traditions, serve to integrate rights

into the daily life of a community.

Some traditional values, particularly those held sacred, may

preclude social change. Yet, the histories of South Africa and

India, as well as studies such as this one, cast great doubt on

the notion that the moral values of equality and freedom from

oppression are originally or fundamentally Western. Such claims

can arguably be appraised best in a framework capturing the

interactions of individual moral development with the cultural

practices and historical particulars of their time.

45


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The right to literacy and cultural change: Zulu adolescents in post-apartheid South Africa

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