Society believes the best interaction between an adult and child ought to render the adult a designated mentor, care-taker, teacher, parent, doctor, or social worker of some sort, and the child a receptacle for their services. If the child is maintained, repaired, upgraded, or serviced appropriately by the designated individual, then society deems the partnership successful and they part ways. Children are not expected to do anything but absorb or allow rendered whatever service on them is being given, accept the upgrade for their sake, and carry on. In some instances, such as between a teacher and child, some dialogue or input from the child is necessary to complete the transaction, but that is in the context of their compulsory education. Society expects nothing from children for their own sake, even it also regards them to super-human heights of holiness for its sake.
I don't want to see the system crumble, I just want alternative (as in, non-bureaucratic) practices in child guidance become more socially acceptable and less of a target of scorn. This is to say, an ideal society would be one where so-called traditional, social, "cradle to grave" methods for bringing children up in the world coexist peacefully with individuals doing good works for others on their own volition. The only difference between the two is that the traditional structures treat children like potted plants who are just expected to sit there and receive their water and sunlight, and these Childlove "good works" practices I describe accept that a child, while being "protected" and "saved" and "taught" and "mentored," may also want to be the one giving, protecting, teaching, and mentoring sometimes, for a change.
Childlove does not expect a child to want to reciprocate the love that goes into them, because it expects nothing from children that one wouldn't expect from any other personal friend, but it won't stop them from reaching out if they desire it. Childlove is not out to "protect" or to "mentor" or to render a specific service in exchange for payment or some other motivation--the motivation for the Childlover is the protecting, is the mentoring, in and of itself. Children are not a means to an ends, they are an ends in and of themselves, and it takes a non-market based, non-bureaucratic, free individual in order to allow them to be. In this case, Childlove is about adults being there for children, but it's also about children being there for adults, or other children. It just requires the adult to be more honest and personal than they would be if they were fulfilling a professional service on behalf of the child--where their presence would just be a physical extension of their all-important title and nothing more.
Because kids know the difference. They know when you're there for them and when you're there because it's your job to be there. It doesn't necessarily have to affect their judgement of you, and certainly you can reach a child on a personal level even if it is your job to be there for them, but the quality of the interaction necessarily suffers from the compulsory, mandatory, or the "on behalf of X" context of the meeting. Officialdom always cuts the heart out of human interaction. If the child chooses their mentor and the mentor is not a fit with the child, or if the mentor chooses the child and the child isn't a fit, then the quality of the interaction suffers somewhat. If the child and the adult choose each other, or the child and the child choose each other, then the interaction is blessed for as long as it lasts. Kids don't want everything done for their sake, on their behalf, for their own good--nobody does--and will almost always see this kind of treatment as just another form of authority regardless of how friendly and "happy" it comes off. Some people will kill you with happiness, after all.
No. Kids don't want happy smiling faces telling them to sit still and receive the service against their will "for their own good," "on their behalf," or "for their sake." Kids are human beings too, and no human who hasn't been tampered with in some way will tacitly accept such condescension without either a flare of protest or silent withdrawal. Children shouldn't be expected to be any different. They want real people who are open and honest about their agendas. They want a person who can honestly answer the question, "Why the hell do you like working with kids?" If you answer with something along the lines of the "joy and wonder," then you've already lost all hope of connection, because the small ones won't get it and the older ones won't buy it.
A child is anything but "joy and wonder." A child is human--all that, the good, bad, and ugly.
There are times when a child has to be a receptacle for services, just like anyone, but there should also be times when a child can be the one reaching out and reciprocating. In a relationship, human beings can say no if they are being infringed on by another. In a top-down interaction between "mentor" and "protege," there is no consent or dissent. If the kids can't be included, it is just another doctor's visit, it's just another timed test--it's not a relationship. Child-centrism is just as vile as adult-centrism, because tossing children into darkness is just as disgusting as blinding them in the spotlight.
Showing posts with label The Village. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Village. Show all posts
Friday, December 17, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Who's Providing Services?
The "it takes a village" mentality is simply that, a mentality, rather than a viable alternative. In many ways, children are raised by the village. They spend far more time interacting with teachers, peers, and social media (internet, television...etc) than they do by their parents. Acknowledging the fact that parents only play a small part in the raising of their children doesn't diminish the fact that for institutional purposes, the child requires someone to claim responsibility for them. This purely legal responsibility is then magnified and made sacred by that so-called "hallowed co-relation" (as Marx described it) attributed to parents by our culture, and outside influences such as non-parent mentors and lovers, though numerous, are seen as dangerous to that socially contrived relationship between parent and child.
Responsibility breeds possessive contempt. Being responsible for an object or a human being, makes the person called upon suspicious of outside contamination. If we view "the village" as a collection of individuals for which a child can develop meaningful relationships within society, rather than a faceless "everywhere" ghost parent that can't assume responsibility for its mistakes (as is seen in the case of state care), the village concept lends justification to the ambitions of those with a desire to give of themselves for the benefit of their young friends.
As a concept, rather than a contrived social institution, the village concept for child raising lends justification to CLs to pick up and nurture the children fallen through its own cracks as just one of the collection of individuals. These cracks are formed when that which is invested in an institution "responsible" for raising children does not meet what is demanded of it. Because nobody demands anything of a CL, they are poised to befriend the children dropped by the system that couldn't live up to its expectations.
The village concept works even when it doesn't.
There's obviously a distinction here between providing a service for a child on that contractual, legal, professional basis and providing a service on the basis of pure devotion and charity. Both are required to enhance a child's life for different reasons and an overabundance of one over the other is bound to run a child's developmental trajectory in less appealing ways. Those who are responsible are providing a service, parents are providing a service for society--they are essentially entrusted to be to human beings what farmers are to crops. Farmers do not have control over the rain or the sunlight, but the work to ensure their crops get plenty of both and fill in the gaps when nature fails them. The family is a unit specialized into generating product for society in the form of a fully capable individual ready to perform all essential social functions for itself at its 18th birthday. To assist in doing this, governments have established their own water and sun in the form of compulsory schooling, state care, and other services.
But that's all that is involved in providing a service on the basis of legal requirement. A child who is nurtured in such an environment will not necessarily grow healthy, even if they are provided with schooling or adequate child care. A child is not a sedentary plant that just absorbs whatever goes into it, but an entity capable of making its own impact on its environment. What a child is capable of doing is superfluous to the society providing a contractual service, because to them, all that they require the child to be is something which can sit and receive the service. Thus children are grown like plants, absorbing water and sunlight, when in reality, their mobility alone produces a whole new dimension of care that society simply can not provide. In a system that necessitates their passivity, their activity can not be provided for no matter how much it necessitates it. So there is an impasse between what a child needs and what society needs, and it begins and ends with the child being a human being.
CLs provide a non-contractual service principally invested in allowing for a child's human qualities to expand once their basic legal requirements are provided for by responsible entities. Together, these two sides work together to satisfy a child's needs both as a social being and as a repository for services.
Responsibility breeds possessive contempt. Being responsible for an object or a human being, makes the person called upon suspicious of outside contamination. If we view "the village" as a collection of individuals for which a child can develop meaningful relationships within society, rather than a faceless "everywhere" ghost parent that can't assume responsibility for its mistakes (as is seen in the case of state care), the village concept lends justification to the ambitions of those with a desire to give of themselves for the benefit of their young friends.
As a concept, rather than a contrived social institution, the village concept for child raising lends justification to CLs to pick up and nurture the children fallen through its own cracks as just one of the collection of individuals. These cracks are formed when that which is invested in an institution "responsible" for raising children does not meet what is demanded of it. Because nobody demands anything of a CL, they are poised to befriend the children dropped by the system that couldn't live up to its expectations.
The village concept works even when it doesn't.
There's obviously a distinction here between providing a service for a child on that contractual, legal, professional basis and providing a service on the basis of pure devotion and charity. Both are required to enhance a child's life for different reasons and an overabundance of one over the other is bound to run a child's developmental trajectory in less appealing ways. Those who are responsible are providing a service, parents are providing a service for society--they are essentially entrusted to be to human beings what farmers are to crops. Farmers do not have control over the rain or the sunlight, but the work to ensure their crops get plenty of both and fill in the gaps when nature fails them. The family is a unit specialized into generating product for society in the form of a fully capable individual ready to perform all essential social functions for itself at its 18th birthday. To assist in doing this, governments have established their own water and sun in the form of compulsory schooling, state care, and other services.
But that's all that is involved in providing a service on the basis of legal requirement. A child who is nurtured in such an environment will not necessarily grow healthy, even if they are provided with schooling or adequate child care. A child is not a sedentary plant that just absorbs whatever goes into it, but an entity capable of making its own impact on its environment. What a child is capable of doing is superfluous to the society providing a contractual service, because to them, all that they require the child to be is something which can sit and receive the service. Thus children are grown like plants, absorbing water and sunlight, when in reality, their mobility alone produces a whole new dimension of care that society simply can not provide. In a system that necessitates their passivity, their activity can not be provided for no matter how much it necessitates it. So there is an impasse between what a child needs and what society needs, and it begins and ends with the child being a human being.
CLs provide a non-contractual service principally invested in allowing for a child's human qualities to expand once their basic legal requirements are provided for by responsible entities. Together, these two sides work together to satisfy a child's needs both as a social being and as a repository for services.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The Village
Had we all been raised as children by one another, our society would be healthier. For what moral person, having taken part in raising children would want to send a child of their own out into a harsh world also of their creation? Wouldn’t everyone work harder to improve the world on a global scale in which they hope to send their young friends off to, the ones they gave their lives to nourish? Does the farmer taint the soil he wants his seeds to grow in?
Sadly, that question will go unanswered for now, because society still derives benefit from the abuse of children. It is an industry after all. Those who were once trusted with guiding a child down the path to maturation and happiness have been cast in the social role of the fiend and the rapist and been done away with--disposed of to make room for the corporations, governments and other impersonal entities to wield undue influence over the personal child, indeed, the new caretakers.
Though buried in endless platitudes, it is all too easy to see how the statement that it takes a village to raise a child has been misapplied. That village constitutes more than the legal guardians of the child, but includes all of society, even as the parent should always remain the child's central peg upon which the rest of society intermittently revolves. This concept is no more relevant in the modern age than it was in the dawn of civilization. When the child becomes everyone's responsibility, the child becomes no one's responsibility.
The parents are legally bound to their relationship, but the child is inevitably shaped by numerous other social entities. Once this is accepted as an inevitability in a world that preaches "the village" and legally enforces much less, therein lies the promise for altering what is a cultural fear of forces "contaminating" the child. Despite how a child is influenced by "the village," none have a larger impact on the child than the individuals for which the child is securely attached to--that is, so long as they are still given a chance to be attached to an individual person.
The CL relationship is essentially that primordial art of loving a child for the preservation of our collective destiny. The love we speak of is that same ancient non-parental method of child rearing reflected into an unreceptive modern world. It is demonized because the village takes no responsibility for the mistakes that necessitate CL. The system wants one thing, to continue being the system, and therefore, individuals are blamed for the mistakes of the village.
Sadly, that question will go unanswered for now, because society still derives benefit from the abuse of children. It is an industry after all. Those who were once trusted with guiding a child down the path to maturation and happiness have been cast in the social role of the fiend and the rapist and been done away with--disposed of to make room for the corporations, governments and other impersonal entities to wield undue influence over the personal child, indeed, the new caretakers.
Though buried in endless platitudes, it is all too easy to see how the statement that it takes a village to raise a child has been misapplied. That village constitutes more than the legal guardians of the child, but includes all of society, even as the parent should always remain the child's central peg upon which the rest of society intermittently revolves. This concept is no more relevant in the modern age than it was in the dawn of civilization. When the child becomes everyone's responsibility, the child becomes no one's responsibility.
The parents are legally bound to their relationship, but the child is inevitably shaped by numerous other social entities. Once this is accepted as an inevitability in a world that preaches "the village" and legally enforces much less, therein lies the promise for altering what is a cultural fear of forces "contaminating" the child. Despite how a child is influenced by "the village," none have a larger impact on the child than the individuals for which the child is securely attached to--that is, so long as they are still given a chance to be attached to an individual person.
The CL relationship is essentially that primordial art of loving a child for the preservation of our collective destiny. The love we speak of is that same ancient non-parental method of child rearing reflected into an unreceptive modern world. It is demonized because the village takes no responsibility for the mistakes that necessitate CL. The system wants one thing, to continue being the system, and therefore, individuals are blamed for the mistakes of the village.
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