Children in cities
by Liesl Graz
The life of children in big cities poses special but he sees other adults, his mother, his big problems for parents, educators-and for the brothers, at work and at leisure: his world children themselves. In the country, where usually forms a coherent whole. A city child family structures remain much closer, the child lives a kaleidoscope existence. He is exposed, grows up with definite models on which he can at a very early age to a multitude of fragmented pattern his behaviour. By the age of four or so, stimuli: he sees life in the streets, often, the country child or the child in a small town especially in warm countries, lived with very knows how his father works all day; city little inhibition; he sees pictures and films far children, even much older, rarely have a very beyond his comprehension. Particularly in new clear idea of what their fathers do in the long neighbourhoods he is thrown in with enormous hours they are absent from home. Not only groups of children almost as soon as he can does the country child see his father at work, walk. He rarely has the opportunity of learning
Stuttgart: a play street
leadership and submission in the small groups of toddlers which are natural to that age.
Immediately thrown into a mass culture, he only knows the values of that culture; the gang leader is his mentor and his terror. With all the dangers of the street threatening him, the city child has fewer and fewer opportunities to learn to face danger alone and yet he must do so if he is to learn courage and self-reliance.
An artificial palliative, but better than most, is the creation of so-called junk playgrounds, which have proved to be extraordinarily liberating to children who live in crowded, too- regulated modem cities. The satisfaction they
give children seems to be directly proportional within the structures of the society, to make to the pain they give aesthetics-conscious his own decisions. In an urban culture, where
architects. there is such a discrepancy between physical
Children grow up faster, physically and men- maturity and the position in society assigned tally, in big cities; yet their school time is to the young, the children often hardly know usually longer than in the countryside. In many where they belong.
tribal societies, when a child is considered In some cities, especially in the industrialized physically adult, he has finished his apprentice- countries of Europe and North America, there ship of life and is free to live as he wishes are enough educational and social opportuni-
ties to counterbalance, at least to a certain degree, the lack of structure and of family examples that seem part of city life. But in cities in developing lands or in disinherited cities in parts of Europe for example, there are not enough schools, not enough museums, not enough youth clubs, not enough social work- ers-often nothing at all to take the place of the disappearing family structure.
In some of the mushrooming cities of Africa young people have taken matters into their own hands. A special problem had sprung up with the children born of parents from two widely differing cultures, for example, one patrilineal and the other matrilinael; the marriages are often short lived and the children practically abandoned. These children have formed bands called" dance groups" in English-
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speaking Africa and "goumbes" in French- speaking areas which are at once social groups, mutual aid societies and often powerful agents of education of the young people by their peers.
One result of this development has been that the figures for juvenile delinquency, thievery, drug addiction, hooliganism, etc. are considerably lower in these African cities than in towns of comparable size elsewhere.
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Copenhagen © Sirman
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Dusse/dorf © Sirman
