Method 4: Public education and development issues

This section includes the following:

• Public ‘attitudes’ and aid issues – some implications for development education
• Coming to public judgement on development issues
• 7 steps in coming to public judgement – an opinion ‘learning curve’
• Some key ingredients for success in the public education ‘learning curve’: learning from other movements

Public ‘attitudes’ and aid issues – some implications for development education

Debates and disagreements around the issue of overseas aid are in many key aspects debates about the core of DE – our sense of who we are in the world; what our roles and responsibilities might be and what our ‘duty’ towards the world’s poorest and most excluded could be.

Like most countries in the ‘developed’ world, Ireland has experienced ongoing debates about the overseas aid agenda:

• how realistic is the 0.7% of Ireland’s gross national product to official development assistance debate? (visit the Millennium Project for an in-depth look at the 0.7% target);
• how much should a country like Ireland contribute?;
• the merits of aid itself and its many ‘varieties; and where does overseas aid fit in with the role of public diplomacy and Ireland’s foreign policy? (See, for example the Department of Foreign Affairs’ foreign policy Global Island, published Jan 2015 and compare it to Ireland’s policy for international development, published in May 2013)

During such debates, considerable time (and resources) has been expended on ‘measuring’ public attitudes via broad general surveys or more nuanced ‘sectoral’ studies. Opinion polls are regularly carried out to ‘measure’ levels of public support and the ‘public’ is then declared to be ‘more’ or ‘less’ in favour of government (or indeed, voluntary sector) aid programmes.

Ongoing lazy use of the these polls regularly leads to calls for more ‘public information’ campaigns to ‘inform’ taxpayers of the positive impact and benefits of such programmes – the assumption being that if the public knew more about the programme (and its good deeds), they would be more supportive, or in some cases, perhaps less sceptical or even hostile.

Under pressure to show progress and produce regular and immediate-impact good news results due to domestic pressure and financial cutbacks, the complexity of issues can be sacrificed for short term results.

In recent years, the very simplistic and one dimensional view of the public in the developed world has been challenged by a variety of commentators and campaigners who recognise the key role to be played by that public in building the development movement.

Assuming that the Irish public lacks basic information on aid and would inevitably benefit from yet more ‘facts’ (especially ‘good news facts’ that have little context; an exception to this has been the World’s Best News initiative developed by Dóchas and participating members) has led to the emergence of a ‘press release culture’ as the key strategy for building public support (see, for example the suggestion for an ‘increased marketing and creation of awareness’ approach to NGOs during a debate on the overseas aid budget at the Sub-Committee on Overseas Development on 2nd April 2009).

Research and debate on the issue, however, does not support this strategy and those of us involved in development education would do well to consider such research as it does indeed go to the heart of DE itself.

Taking one recent example, Eilish Dillon’s recent analysis (Spring 2015) in the development education journal Policy and Practice of national surveys on attitudes to development in Ireland is unequivocal in the challenges for DE as the annual deployment of public opinion surveys, sadly, only replicate modernist and paternalistic assumptions and are weak on advancing critical engagement:

‘…despite some reference to a critical discourse, questions asked in the surveys predominantly reflect modernist and patronising discourses of development.  These discourses reinforce stereotypical, depoliticised and ethnocentric assumptions of development, deny the complexities of the challenges facing the world today and present development cooperation largely, and uncritically, in terms of help or aid.’

Note: there are many articles discussing public opinion surveys and development within the pages of Policy and Practice: a Development Education Review – a good starting place for reading this particular issue further and available subscription-free online.

Coming to public judgement on development issues

One of the most interesting commentators on this issue has been Daniel Yankelovich, a US commentator and analyst on social values and public policy. Taking his cue from the environmental movement, the women’s movement and the broader development agenda, Yankelovich argues:

‘To assume that public opinion is invariably improved by inundating people with information grossly exaggerates the role of information and underestimates the importance of values and emotions.’

(Yankelovitch, D and W. Friedman (2010) in Towards Wiser Public Judgement, Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press, p.15)

In terms of engaging with key social issues, Yankelovitch notes that people come to such issues:

‘…with a lifetime of prejudice, convictions, personal experience, information and misinformation…’

which often leads to a set of ‘resistances’ that information and facts alone (especially those coming from the top ‘downwards’) cannot address. Such ‘resistances’ include:

• Public preoccupation with a variety of more dominant domestic issues
• Ongoing suspicion of leaders’ priorities and motives
• A perception/conviction that money is being wasted etc.

In order to engage educationally with such concerns, Yankelovich (and others) argue that we need to counter such logical concerns by:

1. Providing positive reasons for wanting development assistance to continue and to succeed – arguing a combination of national and personal interest reasons as well as altruism i.e. mutual well-being, the security of future generations and of the planet – ‘regardless of location, we are all in this together’

2. Making explicit the ways in which domestic and overseas development concerns are compatible – domestic concerns can be better addressed by linking them to broader international agendas and perceptions e.g. economic, environmental and social well-being in Ireland is inextricably linked to similar concerns internationally – ‘Ireland does not exist in a vacuum’

3. Aid and broader development cooperation agendas need to be better delivered and must produce credible results – there is much to highlight that is positive but we must be honest and transparent about the failures, ongoing challenges as well as the successes – ‘we must not be afraid to criticise aid from Ireland and elsewhere’, ‘bland publicity does not help’

4. Avoiding abstract terms and ‘specialist’ language – like so many other important areas of life ‘experts’ have taken over much of the development agenda (DE also?) and regularly use convoluted and unnecessary language to impress – ‘we need to challenge the cult of the ‘expert’

5. Changing the process of communication with the public – ending ‘one way’ communication (‘the press release’) and working to build a strategy of genuine and ongoing conversation and dialogue with real (and not stage-managed) opportunities for public engagement.

7 steps in coming to public judgement – an opinion ‘learning curve’

The above analysis suggests a number of key issues that DE needs to address. Yankelovich adds to our understanding of the challenges by offering a ‘typology’ of ‘public learning’ – an approach we would do well to consider carefully.

He offers 7 steps through which public opinion evolves in order to transform raw opinion into considered judgement, which don’t have to be completed chronologically. Moving through these steps can take time, weeks, months, even decades but it can also be catapulted onwards by events and is also dependent in part on our actions and strategies.

The 7 steps can be understood as part of 3 stage process:

Stage 1: Consciousness Raising …largely media-driven, and news events are a major factor in expediting the process…

• Awareness – becoming aware that an issue deserves public attention
• A Sense of Urgency – recognition that an issue or challenge needs to be addressed as a matter of some urgency

Stage 2: Working Through …largely a social process as individuals work problems through in discussion with others until they ultimately achieve resolution for themselves…

• Reaction – once people come to feel that a problem is urgent, they want to hear about possible solutions; this step begins once people begin to react to proposed solutions.
• Resistance – a critical moment and one that is often least understood. Only when people have been exposed to specific policy ideas are their emotional resistances engaged with effectively; this step is one where individuals, groups and communities as well as countries confront and try to work through ‘resistance’.
• Choicework – people often ‘stall’ on an issue as they work through their resistances; this is helped immeasurably by introducing and exploring ‘choicework’. This is the hard work of deliberating the pros and cons of alternative choices and strategies.

Stage 3: Resolution …people sign on, having ‘worked through’ both their emotional resistances and the cognitive weighing of pros and cons…People choose a course of action and are prepared to accept its likely consequences…

• Cognitive stand – after ‘choicework’ people usually reach tentative conclusions, largely cognitive (own reasoning and thinking) in character.
• Judgement – in this final moment people add strong elements of emotional and moral conviction to their cognitive conclusions.