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This is a copy of the exam from 1995
ATLANTIC COLLEGE SCHOOL-BASED SYLLABUS
Time allowed: 3 hours
General Instruction
The examination paper is divided into two parts:
Section A, consisting of Document One - TURNING THE TIDE (on racism) and its questions orHOW STONES CAN HOLD BACK THE SAHARA (on development) and its questions
Section B, consisting of Essay Questions
Candidates must answer THREE questions:
ONE document question from Section A
and
TWO essay questions from Section B
The allocation of marks to each sub-question in the document questions is given in brackets. You should use this as a guide in deciding how much to write for each answer.
from New Internationalist - October 1994
March 1984: Our first trip to the Nilgiri hills, Stan and I stood in a crowded lurching bus. A Paniya woman sat in a seat for three. The two places next to her were empty. Puzzled, I sat next to her. Immediately another woman occupied the third place next to me. 'Cheek of these people,' she muttered. 'They dare to sit when we are standing. What will they do next, I wonder?' I realised that she had stood braving the hairpin bends on a mountain road rather than sit next to the Paniya woman. It was my first experience of racism against aboriginal or Adivasi people in the Nilgiris.
June 1994: Stan and I were talking about our work in the Nilgiris at a meeting held in a Birmingham college. On our way to lunch an elderly British woman remarked to Stan, 'God wasn't very kind to these aboriginal people when He handed out looks was He?'
I was appalled. Yet, on reflection I realised that hers was possibly a view held by my grandmother, my mother and the majority of people in my own country. This woman didn't know much about political correctness but she probably wasn't really racist either and might go out of her way to give money to aboriginal causes. She was just insular in a way the majority of people who never move out of the narrow confines of local communities are.
I'm also fairly certain that the aboriginal people she felt so sorry for would return the compliment with interest. When a group of Adivasi woman encountered their first white person they were equally appalled. 'Is she ill? Why has she never been out of her house to sit in the sun?' were the questions they asked. And if a young Adivasi man or woman were handed Madonna or Robert Redford on a platter they'd probably say a polite 'no thank you' - unless they've got hooked up on cable TV since I wrote this.
But whether it comes through ignorance, a patronising attitude or blatant racism, aboriginal people have faced discrimination from time immemorial. This is probably because their outlook on life is a rejection of what the rest of the world perceives as progress. Historically 'progress and civilisation' have always been equated with material wealth and its accumulation.
Equality and the absence of caste or class is a hallmark of aboriginal societies. Obviously this is a philosophy that has always been the antithesis of what the rest of the world was trying to achieve and so the rest of the world dealt with it by deriding, belittling and sometimes massacring aboriginal groups. Centuries ago, in ancient manuscripts by the Hindu lawgiver Manu, Adivasis in India were described as savage, fierce, black races who inhabited the forests. These uncivilised people actually treated women as equals! It was permissible to hunt, capture and enslave them as they were considered only a little above wild beasts. These are probably the earliest written records of racism. Everywhere, Adivasis retreated to escape the onslaught of marauding armies and invaders and hid themselves deep within inaccessible jungles or high up in remote mountain areas
Over the centuries attitudes haven't changed all that much. A few years ago I was invited to my old school in Calcutta to talk to students about our work with tribal people. I asked the girls what the word 'Advisasi' meant to them. Back came the response: 'Wild, uncivilised, black, ignorant, illiterate, backward, uncouth. They dance a lot, they wear no clothes.' These were kids from a progressive school which encouraged social awareness and responsibility.
They reacted in this manner because of the appalling way Adivasis are portrayed by the media. There are very few films or news reports which deal with tribal issues with any degree of sympathy or sensitivity. Mostly the stories are sensationalised accounts of exotic people who dance, sing and have strange sexual norms. Meanwhile, the thrust of development has been to bring marginalized people into the mainstream. But this is based on inherently racist presumptions - that the majority or dominant culture is superior, and that it is desirable for everyone else to fit into the majority mould. It leaves little room for ethnicity or individualism. It is the acceptance of the melting pot principle. In the Nilgiris, as in the rest of India, a school-going tribal child is confronted with a non-tribal teacher who despises tribal culture. The teacher dismisses the child's tribal name as ridiculous and changes it to a conventional Hindu Tamil one. The books the child looks at are foreign. In one an urban middle-class mother dressed in an alien sari cooks an unfamiliar breakfast and sends her son away to school. The 'good boy' called Ram, brushes his teeth with toothpaste (a tribal child would use neem twigs or charcoal) and his father goes to the office. The tribal child's father would work in the forest or a field. Ram is everything that the tribal boy is not. When a girl enters school she is taught that in order to look 'civilized' she must dress like her non-tribal teacher. Her mother's tribal clothes are ridiculed as backward, primitive and even indecent. And so begins a process of de-tribalization.
This process in reinforced by government officials, social workers and missionaries. Pushed by people in power, it begins to be believed and internalised.
Environmental Correspondent
from Guardian - November 1994
Fifteen years ago the Yatenga, a dry dusty plateau in the heart of West Africa's Sahel,.seemed fated to turn into desert. The thick forests that sustained it as the heart of an empire for 400 years in pre-colonial times had long been cut down, and population increase was rapidly exhausting the soil.
Many villages in this part of Burkino Faso had lost one-third to a half of their cultivable land within a decade. An expensive and highly mechanised EC-aided land conservation programme had failed to slow down the deterioration.
But then, helped by Oxfam, the people of the area turned to an age-old remedy. They put lines of stones along the gentle contours of their fields.
The stone lines slowed the rate at which rainwater ran off the ground, and held back the soil that used to be washed away. Within a few years crop yields doubled on the treated fields, and the technique had spread to more than 100 villages. In 1991-92, a year of good rains, the once-doomed Yatenga produced a surplus of more than 31,000 tons of grain.
Yesterday in Paris more than 100 nations formally signed a treaty that aims to speed the lesson of the Yatenga world-wide. The International Convention to Combat Desertification, which binds countries to draw up national plans to tackle the problem, is the first comprehensive assault on the massive loss of productive land that threatens one-quarter of the Earth's surface and the livelihoods of 900 million people.
It is the first international environmental treaty to have been conceived and completed through the initiative of developing countries, and the first to acknowledge that the ordinary people most affected by an environmental crisis know best how to tackle it.
"The convention commits countries to a bottom-up approach that involves the local populace," said Harna Arba Diallo, a former minister in Burkino Faso, who is executive secretary of the treaty negotiations. "Local communities will be consulted on what they believe is appropriate action, especially in the light of traditional knowledge and practices."
World-wide in the past 50 years, the soil over an area the size of India and China combined has seriously deteriorated as a result of man's actions. Three quarters of Africa's productive dryland and 70 per cent of Asia's has degraded. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that in all, the loss of land costs the world $42bn (28bn) a year.
Desertification is not usually caused by deserts expanding outwards; more commonly it breaks out in patches, like a skin disease, as land is over used. Gradually the patches grow and join together.
Traditionally dryland peoples developed social structures and sophisticated ways of managing the land, but these were often disrupted by colonialism, and after independence the trend was continued by the new governments.
Attempts to tackle desertification, in which the local people were rarely consulted or involved often made things worse. Drilling boreholes to provide water attracted people and cattle, putting the land around them under intolerable pressure, while the EC's earthworks, built to contain desertification in the Yatenga, could soon be seen meandering through destroyed land.
The new treaty - demanded by the Third World counties at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit as a quid pro quo for agreeing to the treaty combating global warming - aims to avoid past mistakes by starting with the people themselves, recognising that desertification has social causes, and involving them in finding the solutions.
There are success stories to give them encouragement. In the Panchmahal Hills, where the Indian states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh meet, soil conservation measures undertaken by the local people have increased crop yields sharply and cut migration from the area.
Kenya's Machakos Valley was virtually written off in the 1930's, but its inhabitants have greatly increased its fertility, despite a five-fold increase in population.
Soil loss has been cut by two-thirds, and average income tripled, in the Tangbeihe River Basin in China.
Ambassador Bo Kjellen, the chairman of the negotiations, hopes that the treaty will mark a turning point in the international assistance for development. "People are asking if large funding programmes have lost their purpose", he said.
"If our convention can come up with a bottom-up approach, which integrates the physical factors with the social and economic issues, perhaps donor fatigue can be turned to enthusiasm."
1. (i) List and categorise the prejudices described in the extract. (6)
(ii) In what ways are the Adivasi being encouraged to conform? (3)
(iii) Do you believe that Madonna and Robert Redford are inappropriate 'role models' who would change 'norms' and 'encourage' deviance and are inconsequential to Adivasi society. Explain why you take this view. (4)
2. Using your own knowledge, examine the ways in which prejudice and discrimination might be reduced. (7)
1. (i) Describe the change in the land of Yetenga and explain briefly how it came about. (3)
(ii) How does the Convention to combat Desertification differ from previous treaties and why is this important? (4)
(iii) The treaty is described as a "quid pro quo (= compensation) for agreeing to the treaty combating global warming" at Rio. Can you suggest why this may be and why the developed countries are less interested in this sort of development. (5)
2. "Aid hinders more than it helps". To what extent would you accept this view? Explain your answer with reference to at least two examples. (8)
Answer two questions
1. Behaviour (direct violence), Attitude (frequently a situation of structural violence.), Cause of conflict
Discuss the terms above with reference to positive peace and each other. (15)
2. "Man's aggression can be understood by observing animals." Assess the validity of this methodology and its conclusions. (15)
3. The non-proliferation Treaty can be viewed as either the most important treaty to date or as an irrelevance. Given the changed world order and renewal of the treaty this year, what changes should be made to it? (15)
4. Contrast the ways in which the recent Peace Treaties were signed involving Israel and South Africa. Compare their content and their consequences. (15)
5. The UN faces a crisis of too much credibility", Boutros Boutros - Gaili said in 1992 when talking of peacekeeping. How were his fears borne out, and what solutions have been proposed? (15)
6. "Non-co-operation is not a passive state; it is an intensely active state - more active than physical resistance or violence". Mahatma Gandhi. Discuss this statement with reference to Gandhi's life and campaigns . (15)
This page is not an official Atlantic College or IB publication and I take full responsibility for its contents. This exam was written by myself and submitted to the IB and John Addison the Examiner.
