"It rarely happens that they seem."
(William S. Gilbert, 1836-1911)
It has been almost twenty-five years since I first met Sir William’s warning and somewhat thoughtful quote. Although I learned this at the beginning of my research in the media, it remains one of the most appropriate subjects of wisdom I have ever encountered, often in ways I did not expect. Here is a prime example, starting with the prehistory:
As the decade of the 80s came to an end, a scientific discussion raged in university communication schools. Today, this topic seems almost bizarre: my professors, a generation of sociologists, published a written word (i. E. Newspapers), did it at the highest level, to convince students raised on television, that there was more "Big Picture" than what we saw on the “small screen”. Of course, in the strict sense of the word they were right. For many reasons, television images paint the world around us with fast, wide, stereotypical strokes, devoid of almost any measured, in-depth analysis. But what I liked most was a clear idea that these scholars, the “older” men and women, did not really like the way my generation and the media were headed. Of course, all this was good, before cable and satellite television penetrated almost 90% of American homes, when personal computers and “mobile” phones were slightly more than new, a few years before the Internet really wrapped the globe, and just around the time that Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor of Facebook, finished first class.
Fast forward to the present, and the irony makes me shrink: two decades in my career as a television producer, former writer and public relations specialist, I slowly find myself “not quite loving the direction in which everything goes,” especially for the youth of the nation and their strong proximity to social media. Despite all my efforts to refrain from the same form of “generation”, which I perceived among my professors all these years ago, I cannot help wondering - no matter how they are: “What is with young people these days?” As an example I noticed that my ten-year-old nephew prefers to play remotely with some faceless child halfway across the country than to go out and play billiards with neighbors, most of whom, no doubt, are engaged in some form of digital leakage of their own!
Of course, these are not just children who seem to have been swept away by a technological tsunami. Careful not to ask the wild native who Norman Rockwell was, but today he had to capture the portrait of the American household, it might not seem so idyllic: here, Junior, rewriting a friend at the dinner table, little Missy dies to get back to her Facebook, and oh yeah, Mom, too, with one eye on the soap opera TiVo or Dad, last on the table, checking online, for the last time, the value of his stock portfolio. We can rightly and should mourn such a phenomenon, a family physically located under the same roof, but far from any true human, face to face.
Recently, I recognized a very special group of young people for not asking the Internet, or Facebook, or any other countless forms of electronic communication. In their particular case, I was reminded that "things, of course, are not as they may seem."
The truth is that even the aforementioned portrait of an American family, however it may seem, is something like fantasy. Difficult economic times, broken homes, children shop ... everyone is trying to understand the "average" American family in our day and age. The situation becomes infinitely more complicated, even in the “healthiest” house, when a not very healthy family member is added to the mix.
Over the past seven months, I have had the privilege of volunteering with the American Child Care Association (AACY) as outreach workers / media. Unfortunately, if you have not heard of AACY, you are not alone. Not only is this modest, upstart organization unique in the US, the children, for what it protects, have no obvious, external signs of the problems they have to face. They come in every race, every ethnicity, and every socio-economic stratum. However, with regard to public health diplomacy, they remain largely mute. How else can more than 1.4 million American children between the ages of eight and eighteen care for chronically ill, wounded, disabled, or elderly family members go unnoticed? These are not just children who help to do housework or cooking and cleaning, but children who administer drugs constantly monitor the health of loved ones, sometimes even act as breadwinners ... due to their education, their social "I" and often their own health
The FL-based AACY Boca Raton Model, Child Care Project (CYP) provides a variety of services at school, out of school, and at home to help and support teacher educators in the state's most populated district. Working in partnership with the Palm Beach School District, CYP currently serves about 400 childcare children and their families in 8 high schools and 17 high schools: a promising start but modest compared to about 10,000 pupils in the whole world. The services provided by CYP include those that can usually be associated with a charitable organization providing services: home visits, training, advanced training, group activities, respectful services, etc. I was on board with all these, despite not so much ”when he was informed by the founder and president of AACY, Dr. Connie Siskowski, about one of the organization’s final accomplishments: the acquisition of computers, printers, consumables and yes - the damnation of our existence - the Internet service for seventy-five most affected by the organization.
Undoubtedly, a donation worth $ 100 thousand. The USA in today's economical economy is a generous and commendable act. But some of me could not help but ask if the donor, the AT & T and the tax agent donated donor, the Palm Beach County Board of Education, was mistaken for some reason. Quietly, I was surprised: “Wouldn’t this money have been better spent somewhere else?” As Dr. Siskovski said, as the call now began to support the Internet service outside of the signed year, my mind immediately went somewhere to another place. I foresaw that a group of already surveyed children selected in society was retreating to their rooms, ignoring their difficult responsibilities and spending endless hours on Facebook. As it turned out, nothing could be further from the truth.
Yes, Dr. Siskovski assured me that caring children at CYP are involved in Facebook, sometimes strongly. And why not? After all, these are children who, because of their responsibilities for the size of an adult, cannot do post-school activities with their peers, cannot play sports or join clubs, often rush home immediately after the last call to take care of a family member. the only psychosocial conviction most consistently formulated by caring children in the program is a sense of unity in their duties. They feel like pariahs, ashamed of their predicament and unaware of its prevalence. Facebooking other children caring for children helps dispel this erroneous and harmful notification, provides them with the means for much-needed interaction — indeed, any interaction with their peers — and teachers, young tutors, they are part of the community.
Oh, yes, and remember that a child hurrying home to control his grandmother’s sugar level usually cannot drop by the library after school to explore homework. If this child is economically disadvantaged, like many children of CYP, the assignment will never be completed. Home computers and Internet services go beyond the economic opportunities of many AACY children, even in Palm Beach County, a supposedly wealthy community that also has an unusually large number of elderly, disabled and immigrant people. Thus, although many of the AACY guardian children have modest economic means, their schools cannot claim the title of One, who might otherwise offer improved curricula, training activities, counseling, parent participation or staff increase and improvement programs.
If all this were not enough, Dr. Siskovsky's internal studies show that “associated” child carers regularly use the Internet to search for information about their recipient recipients; medical conditions and the search for low-cost medicines, food and other household items. Adults also in these care families used their recently provided opportunities to find community or work resources. And AACY itself sees its monthly Treasure Talk e-newsletter and its websites as an essential way to communicate with its dual role of youth. The sites provide information on youth educators, forums for youth, families and professionals, as well as information on medical conditions and community resources.
And again I was reminded: "It rarely happens that they seem." As many of us often do, a biased view of a complex cultural phenomenon prevented me from seeing the very important truth about technology and children today. Away from the curse, at least in relation to the unique case of caring for children and their families, communication should be considered a blessing. Let the trustees have their Facebook; Let them also have a chance to overcome their loneliness and social isolation, to perform at school, to take better care of their chronically weak relatives; and, while we are on it, let the adults in the household also get a chance. Maybe its time to weave them not only our blessing ... but also our support.
To learn more about the American Child Care Association, go to http://www.aacy.org or contact the organization at 1-800-725-2512.
