Raising Expectations: Reversing the Trend of Youth Exclusion

Recently, my wife and I had the great pleasure (and privilege) of attending a holiday event in a neighboring community -- a fashion show where youth of all ages, cultures, and backgrounds modeled extraordinary outfits and styles, and performed light ballet excerpts from The Nutcracker Suite. What caught my attention beyond the festive atmosphere, the proud parents calling out to their children, and the smiles on everyone's face was the opening description of the event in the program:

"Our Team has been brought together by design and not by accident.  We are a diverse group of people who love our community and our children.  We are from a wide range of backgrounds offering an eclectic array of viewpoints and ideas while striving towards a common purpose; 'To serve our community.'  We believe we are fortunate enough to have an exceptional group of young people in our community, and by providing them with an opportunity to shine, laugh out loud, and rip the Runway in dazzling and fabulous fashions, we will in turn raise up an exceptional group of fine leaders in our community." (www.fashioninwinterland.com)

This, for me, captured the true spirit of full inclusion that comprises one of the most important protective factors noted in the theories on resilience.  According to Bonnie Benard, Social Worker and well-known author from WestEd's Health and Human Development Program:

The loss of community relationships among and between adults and youth increasingly means that nonparenting adults in the community no longer know youth, no longer share norms for young people's behavior, and no longer are willing to share responsibility for other people's children.  When they no longer know and interact with children and youth on a regular basis in the community, surveys confirm that they are much more likely to adopt anti-children / anti-youth attitudes. (Bernard, 2004)

We have somehow convinced ourselves that youth don't care about an adult perspective, let alone adult expectations.  However, we need to resist the temptation to withdraw from youth culture or, worse yet, to disparage youth in general (recall the teacher's statement that she was merely "babysitting future criminals").  Studies show that those communities who share the belief that all children and youth are their children, and who are willing to intervene towards the common good, demonstrate lower levels of violence than communities who share similar demographics (Sampson et al, 1997).

It is good to remember that every young person who gets lost due to our negligence or who becomes marginalized due to our prejudice, is one less youth available to transmit precious culture from one generation to the next.