YMCA, Dartmouth Medical School and the Institute for American Values
2003
It's never been easy to get your mind around what James Coleman called "social capital" and what the Commission on Children at Risk, in this provocative new report, terms "connectedness." It says the deteriorating mental and behavioral health of U.S. children is a real problem but we're barking up the wrong tree when we seek to solve it primarily through medication, therapy, and special programs for "at-risk" children. What's needed instead - or in addition - say the 33 members of this commission (a joint venture of the YMCA, Dartmouth Medical School, and the Institute for American Values), is greater attention to the "broad environmental conditions that are contributing to growing numbers of suffering children." "In large measure," they find, "what's causing this crisis of American childhood is a lack of . . . close connections to other people and deep connections to moral and spiritual meaning." Their antidote: children should live in "authoritative communities." Many pages are devoted to setting forth the essential characteristics of such communities, which include: establishing "clear limits and expectations," transmitting to community members "a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person," and encouraging "spiritual and religious development." It's a bit like reinventing "civil society" at the community level and urging that we raise our children within that society. Of particular merit is the scientific evidence undergirding the commission's diagnosis and prescription. The report is 82 pages (not counting 18 commissioned papers) and you can find it at several places, including http://www.americanvalues.org/html/hardwired.html.
