Generalizing about generalizations.

Continuing the discussion about students’ writing, I had a revelation recently. I noticed a peculiar speaking habit among Rwandese that might help explain some of the difficulties I have with students’ writing. During a field trip with seventh graders to the Rwandan Information Office’s (ORINFOR) printing facilities and print newsroom, speakers repeatedly answered categorical or broad questions with rather specific examples. They often elaborated on these examples, straying further from the original idea the student probed.

I don’t know why it had never occurred to me, but this seems a common practice among Rwandese. No generalization is made, rather examples are proffered. I wondered if this trait was due to inability, unwillingness, or reasoned conscious decision and whether making generalizations or not, either initially or from an example, was indicative of education.

Admittedly making generalizations often requires inductive reasoning. We move from examples to generalizations because it’s practical. I am right now using inductive reasoning to make my own generalization about Rwandese from a vault of personal anecdotes. Although inductive reasoning is not perfect because it is technically impossible to justify, it’s often our only means of categorizing or distilling large amounts of information.

It seems sensible that the speakers at ORINFOR would use their examples to form generalizations, but why not think about the example and respond with a generalization? Perhaps the generalization didn’t occur to them, or maybe they expected students to make the connections themselves. Regardless, general answers to general questions were few and far between. In the ORINFOR scenario, I didn’t find it particularly troubling or inappropriate, but in other instances this habit can be problematic. It will certainly hamper my students on their IGCSE exams.

I suspect this habit has deep cultural and linguistic roots in the ways Rwandese communicate, but what those roots are remain a mystery to me. However, education must play some role. I often find myself politely badgering students with barrages of interconnected questions, trying to develop their ability to form generalizations themselves. If we have three examples of a character’s actions, what generalizations can we make about his or her personality? If we have seven textual details about a landscape, what generalizations can we make about the climate and geography imagined by the author? The Socratic dialogue often annoys students, but I believe it’s constructive. It’s precisely this type of method which was so tough in Nyagatare last year.

Jumping to more elaborate conclusions, what are the important cognitive implications of this ill-supported observation? Moving in this direction always risks political incorrectness. Who am I to question the autonomy and cognition of Rwandese? What right or standing do I have to judge? Images of condescending white colonialists pontificating about black Africans’ intelligence should spring to mind.

Obviously I have no proof, from a social science perspective, of any of my generalizations. Not of the trait, nor of its origins. But I can’t help escape the persistent alarm bells ringing in my head. My observations are in fact neither novel nor particularly defamatory. The Rwandan government itself has identified the population’s passivity, deference to authority (bleh), and historically poor education as sources of past conflict and barriers to future economic growth and socio-political stability. Rwandese’s characteristic passivity could account for many of the challenges I face using the Socratic method in the classroom. For the time being, I will be left wondering why some Rwandese have such difficulty engaging in lively discussions and transcending narrow perspectives often defined by exceptional or irrelevant examples, and others do not.