With the development of globalization, increasingly large and complex organizations, the city which expands to the metropolis and the limitlessness of cyber space, modern society is in danger of losing sight of the essential base component of human society, namely the individual and its relationships. These modern trends work against the protection and preservation of the near-social context within which such relationships develop and grow. This constitutes a threat to the rights of children because this near-social context is their world in which they grow and develop. It should nurture the maturity to cope with the wider society which they need to learn about and understand. All concerned with children's development need to study and understand the extent and effect of these social changes upon social living environments in order to defend the child's world. One difficulty is that adults are themselves involved in this process of continuing change and therefore hardly notice what is happening. Adult perceptions are based on the wider effects of economic and technological progress and improvements in material and public health standards and education. Adults are unaware of, or discount, the results upon the near-social world of the child and its capacity to nurture social development. One way to measure these changes over time would be to compare with the social opportunities and experience provided within the traditional community of several generations ago. This is difficult because in most modern societies this kind of community no longer exists or is disappearing. It is possible, however, to construct an artificial model description, or what the German sociologist, Max Weber called an ideal type. Weber studied and collected together the general observations and descriptions of a particular social phenomenon to which he wished to direct public attention. He then extracted the important and distinctive essences and characteristics and put them together into an artificial model or type. This model could be used to assist understanding and study of the phenomenon and comparison with other phenomena.
The traditional near-social context. An ideal type of the traditional near-social context of the child would describe large extended families with the central family unit of parents and children surrounded by similar units of relatives and their children and with near contact with grand-parents. These units would compose a social network of close adult relationships providing reciprocal support and advice for each other. This network would have built up relationships and be interwoven with other similar networks which would comprise a stable total near-community. These interwoven adult networks would accept a general responsibility to provide a protective and caring social environment for all children of the community. These children would grow up and play with children from their own and the other interwoven networks. Their interwoven relationships would create a child culture within which, with the knowledge and concurrence of the adults, the child would grow and develop and where younger children would learn from and be nurtured by their elders. This child culture would develop its own play activities and social programme with a minimum of interference and control from adults.
In such a traditional community a large part of the adult activity, including economic activity to sustain family units, would take place within the community. The children would therefore, see and learn about and even participate in this economic activity. As a result they would experience and understand the different roles fulfilled in the community by the adults with whom they had relationships. Through relationships with adults from all generations the children would learn how roles and abilities could change with age. Coping with and relating to the older generations would give them a natural understanding of the history of their family and community.
The social activities of the community would develop from the life within the community. To facilitate this social life the traditional community would use a communal meeting place usually, in the first instance, a central space like the village green or market square, around which the community had established itself This space would be created and shaped and used by the way the community developed and by the communal needs and activities. The activities would be, firstly, those in which the whole community would participate such as communal meetings, festivals, dances and sports. This publicly visible participation by all members would strengthen the common bonds of relationship and fellowship and be evidence of the total resources of support within the community. Later the community would develop activities which would be specially for different interests or age groups. Because they would take place in the central meeting space they would be observed by all and therefore contribute to the general knowledge within the community and to the understanding of its culture by all the members, including the children. As the need arose, the community would perhaps add community buildings to the communal facilities.
Originally the total community would take responsibility for its organisation, Gradually it would develop special roles to distribute and share the responsibility for increasing community activity. Because these special roles emerged from the community activity the power and status to perform them would be conferred and supported.by the total community.
Of course it must be noted that this ideal type neglects many of the less desirable aspects of such communities, such as the resistance to change, the rigidity of social positions and social differences, and the dangers of prejudice. For this article, however, it has been extracted from many studies to illustrate the desirable aspects of such communities for the near-social world of the child.
Comparison with the modern near-social context. For this article to make a comparison it is not necessary to detail a similar ideal type of the present day community in order to justify the opening paragraph. It is sufficient for the reader to conduct an own analysis of experience of the modern world and to note where it is deficient in providing a near-social world, which nurtures the child towards social maturity, comparable to that described in the ideal type. It could be stated with conviction that modern society provides a social environment which is the direct antithesis of the desirable elements of the deal type.
To note just a few aspects, the ideal type modern family unit would be composed of two carers or one carer and one child, isolated from any relative or social contact network and forced to look inward to its own resources. The child would be reared in the intensive dynamics of the limited family relationships and cut off from widening social relationships with other children or adults except those in adult controlled and steered institutions. The opportunity for the child to have self -expressive play and to develop knowledge of the community and other adult roles would be extremely limited. The reader can complete the worrying comparison.
Unsuccessful modern attempts to solve the problem. Experts concerned with social planning are obviously aware of the problem of the undesirable effects of social change. Quite rightly they say that, even if the desirable aspects of the traditional community were accepted, it cannot be re-created because technological and social change have made it irrelevant. They therefore, excuse the lack of any application of any learning from it.
The strange thing is that if the aim which underlies much social planning is analysed it appears that unsuccessful attempts are being made to achieve artificially some of the desirable aspects of the ideal type described above. Again the article must leave the reader to supply the analysis after citing a few examples. Few residential estates are built today without an attempt to supply the equivalent of the market square. Unfortunately it is usually interpreted by building a ready-made shopping centre, mainly to meet economic and commercial needs. At the same time possible spaces which could facilitate communal activity are closed off to local use. Existing communal spaces like parks are under-resourced and controlled in such a way to deny real public participation and free usage. Social work authorities provide services for the many families which cannot cope on their own resources. These include counselling those with problems of isolation and lack of support. These authorities rarely look for the deficiencies in the near-social context which lead to the problems. Authorities provide playgrounds but these are often too distant to be part of the near-social world or are inaccessible to children when needed, due to fears for personal security, or unusable for free play due to risks of injury. The same authorities see no need to employ facilitating play-workers in the commuity who could help children to play without risk or injury.
Main lessons from the ideal type are not applied. This article suggests that unsuccessful attempts of this kind show how planners and providers have neglected to learn from two crucially important aspects of the traditional community. Firstly it was a small-scale community which was based on networks of primary social relationships between people who knew each other and who supported and helped each other. Contrastingly, modern large scale society relates through a system of corporations, authorities, organisations and associations in which primary relationships where people can recognise and get to know each other, are not usual or necessary or even expected. The personal scale of the traditional community is absent.
Secondly, the traditional community grew and developed slowly and responded to needs which arose within itself and these responses came from its own efforts. In modern societies, developments, provisions and services are conceived at a remote distance from the people for which they are intended and then imposed upon the communities. The communities are expected to receive these impositions from outside the community and require little or no interaction with or participation of the members.
Unsuccessful evidence of this kind is used to support the view that trying to learn from the past is unhelpful because the past cannot be re-created. This article accepts that the past cannot be recreated but suggests that better attempts could be made to apply these two important lessons in social planning.
Application of the lessons are particularly important to the child's right to play. Even child advocates may be guilty of not applying these lessons. International decrees and national policy statements are admirable starting-points but may remain distant from the target groups of children and parents in their own near-social context. Attempts to create child-friendly cities are likely to fail if they do not build upon child-friendly communities. These in turn must depend on adults in the near social-context being motivated to find opportunities to develop primary relationships based on friendship and cooperation within the near-social context. Children need a child-friendly near-social context but they cannot create it for themselves. Adults must create it for them. It can only be done by those adults who are themselves members of that near-social world or part of the networks which relate to it. A friendly near-social world is a personal world and cannot be created artificially or imposed from outside. This is why modern attempts by authorities and organisations fail. They are too distant and impersonal. Helping adults to see and understand the need to re-create these social networks around themselves is not easy. Modern society tends to destroy or make extremely difficult the personalising of the near-social world. This anonymity also fosters a lack of responsibility for and lack of interest in the near social surroundings. Even when adults are helped to see the need and are motivated to change their situation it is still not easy for them because of the size of the task. But it at this near-social level that the work to create opportunities for free-self-expressive play is needed. This is the real task of child advocacy. This is where play-workers working outside institutions, in the community, have in the past had the most success and demonstrated their importance. Unfortunately, today they are very few and far between because the effects of their presence in the community is not understood This is partly because play-workers themselves are not always applying the lessons from the past described above. Where playworkers exist within communities they have the possibility of applying these lessons by using their visibility in the community as a demonstration of a caring near-social world. Not so much in helping the children to play, as to gather around them the surrounding adults into a network to re-create a near-social world in which children have the chances which they had in the traditional community. PlayRights has stated often that it is committed to support this role of play-workers and to encourage them with this real task. Working with adults to support and encourage them is a long process requiring great patience and sensitivity. Results of such patient work are not easily seen and, therefore, are rarely understood and appreciated by distant authorities. Such work is, therefore, rarely supported and resourced and it is rarely given the priority it deserves even in play advocacy. Such patient community support work is, however, vitally needed in all services concerned with the social problems which arise from the loneliness, isolation and alienation which large-scale modern society produces. Experience in community development which aims at countering these effects shows clearly that success is only to be achieved by re-creating local networks based on inter personal relationships. This experience also shows that such networks are easiest to re-recreate by beginning with the interest which adults have in improving the near-social world for their children and their needs.
An example of network activity. The front page and this article show photographs of a traditional meeting place which is still the focus of such activity by local people. The photographs show the vigour of a traditional meeting which is still sustained. In this case, the handwork stalls of the local community organisations during the festival weeks around Christmas. The photographs show how this space which has seen public activity since the 14th Century has been preserved within the houses which have grown up over the intervening years. More than that, this square in the Old Town of Stockholm has been made a pedestrian area and there are moves to declare the Old Town a cultural and historic monument. It is used to illustrate this article because it is an example of the effort which needs to be taken by local networks to preserve the interests of children. The poster by an activist group of parents and other adults proclaims to all and sundry that a large number of children inhabit, use and pass through this area. They throng through the narrow streets designed for the horse and foot traffic of centuries ago. Their safety is being threatened by some thoughtless motorists who, despite the regulations of authorities, still try to use these streets to shorten their routes. The poster above describes how local parents have created an organisation to defend the rights of children to use these streets and the square without threat to safety. It calls upon all interested adults to join the network.
On the next page is a sequence of photographs which show that is not an easy task to defend the near-social world in modern society. Authorities carry out »improvements with the best of intention but not always with the best of results. Even in Stockholm, a city with good practice of citizen consultation and participation, important interests can be overlooked. The sequence shows what happened to a pleasant rural oasis alongside one of the busiest streets in Stockholm when such plans were made. This little space had been a calm restful place for children and adults for several generations. Grassy areas, though small, gave space for children to exercise freely in safety whilst parents conversed after shopping. Hawthorns, cherries and roses had grown large there over the years, probably as remnants of a rural garden long since removed. Their greenness brought nature's colour into an asphalt desert. They cleansed the air and insulated the space from the bustle and traffic of the busy street. In the heat of mid-summer they provided a natural shady area. They filled the space with their blooms at different times of the year. But the inspecting experts decided the trees had grown too haphazardly over the years and showed their age. Their shade and shelter encouraged mis-users. They would all be taken away and replaced by orderly rows of young trees. The space would be re-shaped as a modern town square. It would be aimed at meeting needs of the younger office generation who were consulted in the restaurants around. After local residents, learning at the last-minute of the proposals, intervened, one hawthorn has been retained in the space and one boundary lime tree saved, but efforts were too late to have a significant effect. The final photos p.10 shows the materials of paving and concrete which have been used to replace the grassy child- friendly space. The plan has almost been completed but for months the space was under feet of snow so the final result awaits the spring. Spot checking among passers-by indicate that opinions are mixed but certainly all parents regret that no provision has been made for the many children who accompany their parents when shopping in the area. A simple opportunity to express and apply the child-friendly idea has been missed.
Play advocacy is most needed in the near-social world It is clear that this article continues the views expressed in the last number on the importance of encouraging adults to improve their own neighbourhoods. This could focus around all the possible nuclei in child care and education where adult networks could be formed to improve the children's near social world. It is here that interest in the child's right to play is needed and can be expressed immediately and practically. Play advocates could assume the task to identify in communities all these possible nuclei around which the interest of adults in their children could be developed. Play advocacy could motivate them to form networks to attempts to influence the near social world. But the play advocate must be pro-active. Advocates can nnot expect that adults will respond to national edicts and to written brochures. Advocacy cannot wait for interest to emerge in the inanimate community. PlayRights and similar communication media can provide explanatory and supportive material and information but it must be taken into the near-social world to be effective. Every nursery, child care institution, every school could be visited by play advocates to encourage the formation of networks. Unfortunately, supervisors, rectors and directors, above all, need to be informed about the importance of their role in encouraging these developments. Play advocates need to be trained for and adapted to work with adults in supporting such networks. To help adults to re-create the opportunities for children's free expressive play which are disappearing from local communities is the task which globalisation is presenting to play advocacy.
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