I think all of us in the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s thought that governments could do more than any individual community through big government. Well we now know that we\u2019ve tried a lot of different programs; they\u2019ve come and they\u2019ve gone and we\u2019re still in the same place, still talking about children at-risk, still talking about vulnerabilities whether it\u2019s educational or social. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So programs by themselves are not sufficient. Programs are perfect for the 10% of Canadian families who \u2018hit the wall\u2019, 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\u2019t engage at a community level on a mundane, day-to-day basis, we\u2019re never going to get beyond this programmatic approach. And I think that\u2019s the kind of commitment that\u2019s required. The expression \u201cit takes a village to raise a child\u201d has been over-used but it\u2019s significance is huge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let me give you an example how in the mundane it shows up. If I were to see you on the street today, I\u2019d probably say \u201chi, how are you?\u201d And your response would be \u201cfine thank you\u201d. 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 \u201care the children well?\u201d 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? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And to sort of give you an illustration of how much we\u2019ve withdrawn and who\u2019s paying the price, let me give you an illustration. Most parents today, and I did certainly in my day, street proof their children. \u201cIf you encounter a stranger, scream and run.\u201d That\u2019s sort of the natural tendency. But as adults, before instituting this approach, did we ask ourselves, \u201cwhy are children vulnerable\u201d? And if we had, we might have found out that they\u2019re vulnerable because, we as adults are no longer present on the street. Because we say \u2018we don\u2019t know our neighbours\u2019, we in fact, don\u2019t recognize our neighbours. So we no longer know who belongs on the street, who doesn\u2019t, we\u2019re not on the street , so when a stranger comes along, there\u2019s nobody around who knows that\u2019s a stranger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what we say to the child is \u201cyou\u2019re now responsible for figuring out who\u2019s a stranger, screaming and running\u201d. 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 \u2018start from the place of fear\u2019? 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\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think all of us in the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s thought that governments could do more than any individual community through big government. Well we now know that we\u2019ve tried a lot of different programs; they\u2019ve come and they\u2019ve gone and we\u2019re still in the same place, still talking about children at-risk, still talking about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-text-only.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1195","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1196,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1195\/revisions\/1196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}