True Story 4.19
Eighth-grade students found digging a trench in Zimbabwe
The setting for this story
This first-person account was written by Gerald, a Canadian who volunteered to teach math in a rural school in Zimbabwe soon after that nation gained independence.
A story of misaligned minds27
Classes had ended early, and I was on my way home when I encountered girls from grade 8 digging a trench. I enquired what they were doing.
“We are digging a trench, sir,” they replied in chorus.
“What is the purpose of the trench?” I asked. They responded with blank stares.
“Why are you digging this trench?” I said, rephrasing.
“Because we are being punished, sir,” was their reply.
“Who told you to do this?” I asked.
“The deputy headmaster.”
“Did he not tell you for what purpose this trench would be used?”
“Yes,” they responded.
“So for what will it be used?”
“He did not tell us, sir.”
Gerald’s question
Why are the girls so docilely accepting this pointless task they’ve been given? And why did they tell me they knew the purpose of the trench, then abruptly say they did not know?
Critique of story 4.19
Gerald’s questions draw our attention to two features of Zimbabwean culture, one related to people’s interactions with authority figures, the other concerning local patterns of English use.
Some of us are astonished by the girls’ compliant acceptance of a physically tiring task with no apparent purpose. Many American middle-schoolers would have questioned or even protested such a task – thereby demonstrating the individualistic mindset with which we’ve supplied them. But the culture of Zimbabwe is communitarian, so each person’s needs and desires carry little weight. Elders, the repositories of wisdom, are deeply respected, as are duly constituted authorities such as deputy headmasters and classroom teachers. They are assumed to know what’s best for all subordinates, especially for children and youth. Dig a trench over there? OK, we’ll do it.
We individualists like to imagine the Zimbabwean girls whispering to each other that, “Telling us to dig this stupid trench just goes to show what a jackass that assistant headmaster is!” It’s understandable that we do this because, if an assistant principal had told us at that age to dig a trench, that’s what we would have done. But we cannot rely on our experience in one society to accurately predict how people in another society will think and behave. If we want to know with assurance how they’ll think and behave in a situation, we’ll need to go there and observe them.
Let’s turn now to the girls’ use of English. Gerald had asked them, “Did he not tell you for what purpose …?” Because the deputy headmaster had, in fact, not told the girls, their grammatically correct answer was, “Yes” or, stated in full, “Yes, that is correct, he did not tell us.” In Zimbabwe and other regions of the English-speaking world, a negatively phrased question is answered in alignment with the questioner’s grammatical construction. (You asked, “Did he not tell you?” You’re correct; he did not tell us.).
That’s not the pattern observed in the U.S. and Gerald’s region of Canada. We answer a question phrased in the negative by responding to the expectation of the questioner. Had this situation occurred in the U.S. – American girls digging – the girls would have sensed that Gerald expected that they had not been told the trench’s purpose and would have replied, “No” or, stated in full, “No; as you expect, he did not tell us.” In short, they would have confirmed Gerald’s expectation. In the U.S. and Gerald’s region of Canada, a negatively phrased question is answered in alignment with the sensed expectations of the questioner. (You seem to believe we will answer “No,” and indeed our answer is “No.”).
Either of these two patterns works perfectly well – if everyone present has their minds similarly aligned regarding negatively phrased questions.
For thought
Imagine American girls digging. How would they become aware of Gerald’s expectation that they had not been told the trench’s purpose? In most of the U.S. and Gerald’s region of Canada, there is common, implicit agreement that, whenever speakers phrase a question in the negative – “Did he not tell you …?” or “Didn’t he tell you …?” – they are confident that the answer will be “No.”.
If Gerald had been confident that the headmaster had explained the trench’s purpose, he would have asked something like, “What did the assistant headmaster say is the purpose of this trench?”
Related stories
Stories 1.01 and 7.03 also concern students showing respect to faculty who are “in authority” due to senior age or official position. Stories 7.05 and 7.12 describe students showing respect to faculty who are “an authority” on some matter due to advanced academic learning or extensive experience. Chapter 6 discusses the distinction between “in authority” and “an authority.”
Go to Chapter 1 Quick-Links | Return to Chapter 4 Quick-Links | Go to Chapter 7 Quick-Links | Go to Chapter 10 Quick-Links
Endnotes:
27 Fast, 92–93, 100.
Full citations are available at misalignedminds.info/References.