Editorial: Turning the world upside down
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17466660200700031 |
| Pages | 2-3 |
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
| Author | Michael Little,Nick Axford |
| Subject Matter | Education,Health & social care,Sociology |
2
1Dartington Social
Research Unit, UK,
and Chapin Hall
Center for Children,
University of
Chicago, US
2Dartington Social
Research Unit, UK
Journal of Children’s Services
Volume 2 Issue 4 December 2007
© Pavilion Journals (Brighton) Ltd
An intervention to keep children in school in Debra
Tabor in Ethiopia might appear largely irrelevant to
the custodians of children’s services in the
economically developed world. The rather depressing
caravan to Eastern Europe in the last 15 years
suggests that the primary transaction between
European and North American experts and the rest of
the world is to instruct, not learn.
As Emma Crewe’s article in this edition of the
Journal demonstrates, the structure of relationships
between the ‘North’ – the economically developed
countries of the world – and the ‘South’ – the
economically developing nations – stifles innovation
and learning in all parts of the globe.
Children develop in much the same way wherever
they are raised, but the environments in which they
are raised vary to an extraordinary extent. In the
North we argue about definitions of poverty, but for
too many children in the South poverty is about
securing the bare essentials of survival. And often
they live in societies where the rich are at least as
well off as the wealthy classes in the North. Many
environmental stressors that have been gradually
reduced in the North, such as poor nutrition or the
lack of accessible clean water, are highly prevalent in
the South, while some new risks in the North – the
vicissitudes of overabundance – remain relatively rare
in the South. These contrasts are a scourge on our
planet, but the scientist will also recognise
opportunities to learn.
The tragedy of life in the South means that the
environment can vary to a huge amount in a single
lifetime. Losing parents and coping with manmade
disasters, such as war, and natural disasters can be
more common in the South than in the North. There
are situations, in China for example, where massive
economic development means that one generation
lives a life much at odds with what went before.
These rapidly changing contexts provide scope for
natural experiment by comparing children’s health
and development before and after the change.
Since need generally exceeds the supply of goods
and services to meet that need in the South, again by
quite staggering amounts, there should be fewer
objections to experimental evaluation. If resources to
support, say, children’s physical or emotional health
in primary school are only sufficient to reach a small
proportion of schools, then randomly allocating
schools ‘on’ and ‘off’ the new intervention and
comparing the two groups to detect its impact on
children’s well-being is as good a way of deciding
priority as any. One would wish the situation
otherwise, but where it exists the potential for
learning should be exploited.
The contexts of the South are particularly
auspicious for studying resilience. Accounts of the
experience of children’s lives in the South are
breathtaking for all the wrong reasons: crossing
continents unaccompanied by parents, working
longer than most adults in the North, becoming
caught up in conflict and dealing with risks
associated with the chaos that follows, and so on. But
what is also striking is the significant proportion of
children in these circumstances whose health and
development remains relatively intact. The prevalence
of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and
physical ill-health symptoms in high-risk groups is
high, but the majority of individuals do not succumb.
The relative absence of children’s services also
produces opportunities. Attempts to evaluate service
impact in the North are often handicapped by the
clutter of provision and by the fact that some
services, for example residential care, are as much
historical artefact as about meeting a need. They
exist because they are there and finding out their
contribution to children’s health and development is
seemingly impossible. Of course the same problems
exist in the South, but to a much lesser extent. The
opportunity to innovate in the South is probably far
greater than it is in the North.
Unfortunately, as Emma Crewe’s article explains,
too many opportunities to learn from the South
about children’s development and children’s services
are overlooked.
First, it is too often assumed that children in the
North and South are different and that the
Editorial: Turning the world
upside down
Michael Little1and Nick Axford2
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