Mirabelli – private public responsibility

I think all of us in the 60’s and 70’s thought that governments could do more than any individual community through big government. Well we now know that we’ve tried a lot of different programs; they’ve come and they’ve gone and we’re still in the same place, still talking about children at-risk, still talking about vulnerabilities whether it’s educational or social.  

So programs by themselves are not sufficient. Programs are perfect for the 10% of Canadian families who ‘hit the wall’, who absolutely need our help. And the help they require is beyond the scope of Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Elm Street. But if we don’t engage at a community level on a mundane, day-to-day basis, we’re never going to get beyond this programmatic approach. And I think that’s the kind of commitment that’s required. The expression “it takes a village to raise a child” has been over-used but it’s significance is huge.  

Let me give you an example how in the mundane it shows up. If I were to see you on the street today, I’d probably say “hi, how are you?” And your response would be “fine thank you”.  And neither of us really would have thought much about what was being asked or said. In the Masai culture, when two people see each other for the first time and they greet each other, the expression is “are the children well?” And so imagine saying that every day as you greeted each other. Would that not make the focus of the consequences of everything I do, matter? 

And to sort of give you an illustration of how much we’ve withdrawn and who’s paying the price, let me give you an illustration.  Most parents today, and I did certainly in my day, street proof their children. “If you encounter a stranger, scream and run.” That’s sort of the natural tendency. But as adults, before instituting this approach, did we ask ourselves, “why are children vulnerable”? And if we had, we might have found out that they’re vulnerable because, we as adults are no longer present on the street. Because we say ‘we don’t know our neighbours’, we in fact, don’t recognize our neighbours. So we no longer know who belongs on the street, who doesn’t, we’re not on the street , so when a stranger comes along, there’s nobody around who knows that’s a stranger.  

So what we say to the child is “you’re now responsible for figuring out who’s a stranger, screaming and running”.  In the moment, that probably makes sense, but in the long term what kind of community and society are we creating when we say to the child ‘start from the place of fear’? Not a place of love. Not a place of surprise. But start from a place of fear. And does this over time as the child grows up does this mean that we now get bigger and better locks on our doors and so on and are less and less and less public? Well it just means that the vulnerabilities will grow, A. And B, our police costs will get outrageous and where’s the sense of quality of life? So small decisions made by Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Elm Street really shape the community in which we live.