In the wake of the tragedy in Tucson, we have seen finger-pointing and peacemaking, fury and forgiveness, the worst and the best of our leaders and fellow citizens.
On the positive side, we watched thousands of citizens join together at the University of Arizona to mourn the dead, support the wounded, and honor the heroes of Saturday's shooting spree. We heard the president's message of hope and healing. We saw the outpouring of grief and care from the local community throughout the ordeal. And we must ask, what lessons might we learn from this awful experience to strengthen our families and neighborhoods?
A way to start is by asking questions. For example, if we know that it takes a village to raise a child, what happened to the village? When we ask most people about how the saying applies in their neighborhood, the responses follow a pattern:
"Do you believe that it takes a village to raise a child?"
"Absolutely!"
"If your neighborhood is like a village, what does it do to raise its children? And by that, we don't mean how do individual families raise their children, or how does the school teach them? We're asking how do you and your neighbors, working together like a village, help raise the local young people?"
Usually there is a long, thoughtful silence at this point and a response something like, "Well, I know my neighbors, we watch out for each other in some ways, but as neighbors, we really don't raise our children together."
"Well, then, let's imagine that you and your neighbors did decide to work together to raise your children, what would you do?"
Usually there is another long silence. Very few ideas.
We all have opinions about what families should do; we all have opinions about what schools should do. We have lost the imagination of what a neighborhood could do to raise a child. This means there is a great opportunity to organize neighbors to raise the local children - to become a village that raises the children.
We have two questions:
First, in your neighborhood, have you done anything together to help raise local children? Or, do you know of a neighborhood that does something to help raise their children?
Second, what do you think could you and your neighbors could do together to help raise the neighborhood youth?
We need to have answers to these questions and more. For example, do people know the names of the children in the neighborhood? Are there people home in the afternoon that could look out for a child? Are there tasks in the neighborhood that children can do?
It is unlikely that strong neighborhood connections could have prevented the heartbreak in Tucson. What we do know from the real-life experiences of citizens from neighborhoods around the world that we have worked with is that families and neighbors have the capacity to create a "village" and a life that our schools and governments can never provide.
John McKnight is emeritus professor of education and social policy and co-director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University. He is the co-author of Building Communities from the Inside Out and the author of The Careless Society. He has been a community organizer and serves on the boards of several national organizations that support neighborhood development. Peter Block is founder of Designed Learning. They are coauthors of The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (Berrett-Koehler).
For more commentary from McKnight and Block visit their website www.AbundantCommunity.com
There is on our website (www.abundantcommunity.com) more commentary on these issues by us and others who are building strong communities. We invite you to join us there and explore some of these ideas further.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts --
Peter