Last week, the English teacher set up the classroom a bit like a debate and asked the kids to choose what they thought was better: modern culture or traditional culture. “Human rights exist in modern society” was an argument presented.
“For example,” the girl argued, “in traditional culture, a girl who became pregnant outside of wedlock would be sent to the woods and maybe eaten by lions and tigers.”
A few laughed at the part about lions and tigers, but everyone on the Modern Culture side nodded.
The Traditional Culture side responded with, “but today women kill the child.”
The English teacher asked, “what is that called?” Nobody knew. “An abortion” the teacher said. I desperately wanted to mention the word “infanticide”, which was more common before abortions were possible. But I held my tongue.
“But,” responded the Modern Culture side, “if you ban a girl to the forest and she dies, then you are killing both the girl and the child.”
“Yes,” a Traditional Culture participant answered, “But it was a punishment for going against their values.”
This particular exchange is not indicative of what anyone thought – it was a debate where positions were intentionally the opposite of what people thought. I genuinely think that these girls did not in any way believe that the types of actions once taken against unwed pregnant girls were right. But it is always interesting to hear what types of arguments people feel they should use when defending a position that is not their own.
There were mostly girls in this debate – around 20 girls and two boys. This was a group who were studying English, Kinyarwanda and French for their matriculation exams. It was the equivalent of your average English Lit. class at university, but even more biased for girls, because it is easier to get into than physics and math and, statistically speaking, girls at the age of 18 tend to be less interested in Math and Science, for whatever reason, so may not score as well on the Math and Science exams. Maybe. Tell me if I'm wrong.
The teacher framed the debate in a way that may have lead the class to think that defending “traditional culture” meant opposing women’s right: “When I say ‘traditional culture’ I mean the kind of culture where you do not decide who you marry and where women did not study.”
I spent Saturday and Sunday coaching debate to a group of students from various high schools in Kigali. At Agahozo-Shalom, in Rwamagana, the students come from vulnerable backgrounds, often impoverished backgrounds, and step into a school with good resources. At this debate workshop in Kigali, the students were a mix of relatively privileged kids who studied at the top private schools; and students with less privileged backgrounds who studied in more mediocre schools. It was the first time I had met students with flawless English, with that tiny drop of British accent, and perfectly pressed uniforms, debating with students who did not go to the stop schools. One girl was a prefect. In my mind, if you go to a school with prefects, you are either privileged or Harry potter. But they were very helpful in bringing up the level of the kids from the mediocre schools.
At the end of the weekend the last debate was “This House Would re-institute the death penalty.”
At one point “Human Rights” were personified:
“We cannot let the human rights just come into our country and decide what to do. We, Rwandans, must decide, not all the human rights who want to decide for us.”
I think, maybe, he thought the “human” in “human rights” was used to describe the “rights” as being actual humans – as in “we are all human beings” or, if you go to Madam Tussauds, you have the “mannequin Tom Cruise” versus the “human Tom Cruise.”
It was interesting seeing such the concept personified. I do not think this particular debater did not like human rights or, if you asked him, think of "human rights" as something from the outside, as people coming in. I think he just thought that, if one were to support re-instituting the death penalty, this is the type of arguments one were to present.
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