IT TAKES A VILLAGE: COMMUNITY AND THE CHALLENGES OF THE TIME

“It takes a village to raise a child,” says an African proverb. That is, the parents, grandparents, friends, teachers, elders, religious leaders, in sum, the entire community nurtures a child. The saying may have evoked an image of an African village in your mind where a child grows up playing with friends in the neighborhood. The child participates in religious rituals and celebrations, learns to read and write with peers, and helps the elders in the field or market. And through this experience develops his/her personality, world outlook, social roles, skills, desires and expectations.

This adage is equally applicable to our complex life in modern cities. However, you can also add the modern forms of socialization like modern education, mass culture, media, internet and other such elements of our modern lives to the list of factors that nurture our children and youth. In fact, these modern forms of socialization play a major role in this nurturing. Today our children spend a good part of their day time in school, with their friends, and in front of TV, videogames, and internet, which if you count is more than the time they spend with their parents. How good or bad is it? I leave that discussion for another occasion. But to make a quick comment here: when the motive becomes maximizing profits in any institution, be they the media or schools, you cannot expect your children to be treated like innocent beings to love and nurture rather they are seen as consumers to sell products and make profit of, in one way or another.

This is where a community’s role becomes very important. For it can create the conditions – culture and institutions - to ensure the development of the whole child. Not just the education part, but also in terms of nourishing cultural values, spirituality, positive social interactions, and a sense of purpose, in short, the well-rounded nurturing that Islam has asked us to provide to our children. The community can effectively buffer against the influence of endless materialistic competition being promoted in the name of choice, secularism in the guise of moderation, and individualism and atomization of society in the name of freedom that is part of the package our children receive from the abovementioned modern forms of socialization.

The community can centralize resources that parents alone cannot provide. Not all parents can be super mom and super dad in all aspects of the nurturing process. And not all parents can afford to buy a library of instructive books and latest educational resources for their homes. They can care but they cannot satisfy all the needs of their child. And, then, not to forget those parents that let the TV baby sit their children while they are busy with other chores. Think of the problems that you see today relating specifically to the youth, such as feeling of isolation, stress, peer pressure, generation gap, drugs, crime, and negative relationships. These problems are structurally connected to the rapid changes accompanying the neo-liberal global market expansion, the visionless flooding of mass culture, and the general corruption of values in the larger social context. To expect that the parents could resist these overwhelming changes all by themselves is wishful thinking. Surely, there is no substitute for parents, but they alone are not enough. And don’t wait for a solution to come from the government. Only by strengthening our communities can we tackle these social problems. Only by acting collectively as a community and by developing effective public avenues within our communities can we provide a healthy environment to our children that would nurture different aspects of their personality, talents, creativity, views, social interaction and cooperation, and a positive attitude toward the larger society to change it for the better.

Granted, the ground reality of our communities may not be very ideal. But if the choice is between the private companies (and other such for-maximizing-profit institutions) and our communities, for nurturing the values of our young generation and guiding their lifestyles, I prefer our communities. I see it more practical and effective to invest efforts at making our communities a better experience for our young generation than try to resist the larger structural pressures without them.

(April 30, 2007)