Guhn – valuing social connections

I think the one of the number one accomplishments if you will, or success stories of the MDI is that we are starting to see a different type of conversation around both social relationships and the role of schools in communities and the role of social relationships of children for their well-being. And it’s not as if people in the past have not been aware of the importance of social relationships. You talk to anyone and they will say, “Of course. My family, my friends, that’s one of the most important things.” A core question is how do we organize our society to allow time for social relationships, playing together, talking, because that’s the essence of our being but we – there’s – if we only think about transportation and GDP and some other competitive forces; we cannot lose this part because at the end of the day we’re all going to be unhappy.  

So I think there has to be a healthy balance and measures like the MDI, of course there are other initiatives, they really help us to put these things into perspective. We have to create space in our society, whether it’s school or the work place or in our communities that allows people to spend time together. And that has always been the case but what we now see based on the MDI is there a lot of children that say they’re not connected, neither to their peers nor to adults in their environment and the question is why is that the case because that’s fundamentally wrong, it’s against the human nature.