That’s one reason why kinship foster care is a risky proposition in many cases.Ĭonsider the issue of bullying ( 2). If you’re dealing with high-risk kids who have a tradition, a heritage of risk, you better be very careful about where you place them. This is a finding that has tremendous implications for the practice of child welfare. But if neurologically damaged children were growing up in abusive families and dysfunctional communities, they were four times as likely to end up as violent teenagers than biologically normal children. Twenty-five years ago, a study by Mednick ( 1) asked the question, “Are kids who are born with minor neurological damage more likely to end up as violent teenagers than biologically normal children?” It turned out that if they were growing up in well-functioning families, they were no more likely than biologically normal children to end up as violent teenagers. The issue of violence demonstrates a lot of striking examples of the importance of context. Cause-and-effect relationships are always shaped and conditioned by culture, society, community, sex, race, ethnicity, and historical period. When you look at research on human development with your eyes wide open, you find rarely, if ever, a simple cause-and-effect relationship. The first is an ecological perspective on human development. There is a series of five or six tools I would put in our box to address the issue of violence. To dig deeper into this issue, and not just to have some meager popular response, we need to improve what I like to call our ‘conceptual toolbox’. The point of the parable is that if the real issues often lie up the road somewhere, in the dark places where people don’t want to go, then working where the light is good will yield few results beyond the appearance of action. The reason this parable is applicable to us today is that there are so many forces at work around us and inside us to get us to look where the light is good – where you can get funding, where there are grants, where you can get corporate sponsors, where it doesn’t rock the boat and where it is personally comfortable. Where exactly were you when you dropped the keys?” George says, “I was about a hundred and fifty yards up the road when I dropped the keys.” So, of course, Joe says, “Why are we looking here?” George replies, “The light is much better here!” Finally, Joe is really depressed and says, “Alright George, let’s take a really radical approach. I live 35 miles away and I can’t go home until I find them.” “Well,” says Joe, “Let me help you.” They try several different approaches but they still can’t find the keys. Joe stops and says, “George, what’s the matter?” George says, “Well Joe, I have lost my car keys. He comes upon his friend George, on his hands and knees, on the street groping around under a lamppost. In the parable of the lamppost, Joe is on his way home from a meeting one night. Another way to make that point is with a parable. In our approach to the issue of violence and safe schools, we need to think more deeply. Lewin understood that to do good practice you have to understand things deeply. We tend to think theoretical is over here and practical over there. Lewin once wrote that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory,” which, to an American ear, often sounds like a contradiction in terms. There was a German psychologist (Kurt Lewin) who worked in the United States and tried to bring the European approach to America. But if what is needed is to think more deeply about the issue, it’s necessary to lean on a much more European tradition, where theory and deep analysis have a longer history and greater kind of social credence. The slogan “Just do it!” should probably be our national motto. If it’s action you want, North Americans are number one. Simply because energy is mobilized does not mean that people will do the right thing. We need to understand the legacy of racism and classism that informs this issue and defines it in many ways, but at the same time we need to make use of this mobilization of energy. What changed is that now all of North America, including middle-class white North America, can look in the newspaper and see their kids involved with or victim to violence. Everything changed in April 1999 in the wake of the Littleton shootings in Colorado. There was a time not that long ago when the issue of lethal youth violence was marginalized.
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