> It’s weird that groups like the Elks have declined so much in recent decades, because it feels they really are the solution to a problem everyone complains about.
Social orgs can supplement a healthy community. They can't replace one, however.
A healthy community is one where it is trivial for kids to go on their own to a safe space. A place where they can Kid together, free from interfering adults.
To some extent the Elks is a healthy community. Our lodge is definitely a place where kids can hang out together free from interfering adults - that’s what our kids do there with their friends all the time.
We show up, they run off and do their thing with the other kids. We find them when it’s time to go home.
It’s a place with a fence so they can’t wander of, where you know everyone is safe to be around, and where you know if something bad happened another Elk would see and sort it and and come tell you.
> To some extent the Elks is a healthy community. Our lodge is definitely a place where kids can hang out together free from interfering adults
I do get that. Between scouting and youth leadership I have been part of organizing and running similar environments many times over.
But they are not communities. They are adult-generated, curated experiences. They are facsimiles, built out of patchy facades.
One facade: Moving the adults to an adjacent space and pretending that is adult-free time (I've done it).
As far as we think these simulations meet kids basic needs, we're fooling ourselves. Placing kids in adult constructs denies kids their autonomy. Every time. Mostly by design.
Worthwhile autonomy includes kids being able to come and go fully on their own. Trivially.
It's through autonomy (and genuine independence) that kids' critical growth happens. Organic kid-spaces are fertile soil where ambition grows.
They are the safe spaces (safe from adults) to make the kind of mistakes that teach strong interpersonal relationship and vital problem solving skills.
It's what every generation of kids had throughout human history, until we adults eradicated it - seemingly everywhere we could.
We adults put cars everywhere. We blast out false stranger danger messaging. We made criminal trespassing the default and maximized development. And we made lots of other kid-hostile changes to society that I'm certainly missing here.
sidebar: Compounding this is that parents are stupidly expected to fill all those new gaps in kids needs. Parents are now required to have the wisdom of all those nearby adults that disappeared with communities. And parents now have to spend 10x the time parenting, compared to their recent ancestors.
Together, this is all an unimaginably enormous loss for kids. These simulations you and I put on aren't really capable of mitigating it.
> Kidding together means setting a cat on fire and laughing when it's screaming running around. It means beating the fat kid till he can't stand up.
This is very rarely true. I grew up with rural hill people and I was a skittish, annoying kid who got bullied a lot.
Bullying was something that mostly happened in isolation. I was at-risk at school or if I was out alone and ran into the wrong kids, like the local neanderthal who started shaving at 10.
Where I was safe was in groups. These were rough kids, sometimes brutally so. Feuds between youth could be extreme and the injuries were often serious. But those were between individuals or sometimes families. In groups, there were boundaries - a truce could be assumed.
Animal cruelty existed but wasn't overly common. It sometimes happened within feuds. ex:A pet would disappear and be found down a well. And like bullying, that happened in isolation.
Animal cruelty was never a social thing. Ever. Someone who entertained the notion could expect to get beat by the other kids until they thought differently. There was no tolerance for it.
Social orgs can supplement a healthy community. They can't replace one, however.
A healthy community is one where it is trivial for kids to go on their own to a safe space. A place where they can Kid together, free from interfering adults.