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Does the Quality of a Community Really Matter to the Children’s Abilities?

  • Writer: Hi Neighbors
    Hi Neighbors
  • May 17, 2021
  • 4 min read

Updated: May 23, 2021




Since ancient China, there is a story about Mencius' mother moving their house to three places for a better environment to raise Mencius. The society today also pays more attention to the education and cultivation of children. Today, let's take a look at some of the factors that affect the health of children in our communities. This blog mainly introduces the influence of variable factors in the community on children's abilities through the following points:


1. Children's organizational and communication skills


Children's ability to organize and communicate is one of the most influenced factors. First of all, community safety is the key that affects children’s outdoor time. The less restrictions towards their activity time, the better their organizational and communication skills will be. As a side fact, those who have longer outdoor time, they will often be proficient in the early childhood language skill earlier than other children. Some of the variables in this period are not only local crime rates, but also other factors. For example, the age group and the marriage rate in the community will directly or indirectly affect the community safety and/or the guardians’ response and evaluation of the community safety. For example, guardians who actively participate in community safety-related activities locally will make more reasonable outdoor schedules for their children, so that children can fully experience a safe community. Moreover, a healthy community interaction and communication of the parents or other guardians has significantly improved the organization and communication skills of children. It's worth noting that guardians’ ideas about the safety of the community often diverge from the fact of the safety activities of the community itself. For example, some parents may think that the safety of a diverse neighborhood is related to the identity of their neighbors, thus teaching children a false sense of neighborhood safety that connects it with race.


In addition to safety factors, the age group of the community and the number of children in need of supervision, especially adolescents, also affect the quality and ability of children to make friends, thus affecting their ability to organize and communicate. Children in the same age group are more likely to find playmates in the community and reach a mature mental state earlier. And in general, a younger community also increases acceptance among children. To look back to Flushing, children under 18 make up only 15.8 percent of the population (compared with 20.9 percent in New York City as a whole), and 18.7 percent of residents over 65 (compared with 14.1 percent in New York City as a whole). The Flushing area's median age is also 7.3 years higher than the New York City average (43.8 versus 36.5), but its large population also gives younger peers more options.


Flushing's average age is higher, but it has the advantage of being overseen by many grandparents and being more active and connected to the community. Research has shown that the closer the child guardians are to the community, the more social opportunities children have, and the better their organizational and communication skills will be. In addition, children in areas with high urbanization have higher communication skills than those in rural areas.


2. Children's comprehension of textbook knowledge


First, there was no direct relationship between children's understanding of knowledge and the degree of remoteness. Yet in both rural and urban areas, children's comprehension of textbook knowledge was positively correlated with the guardians' social network, especially the relationship between personal resources. In those communities where parents have a certain social relationship, such as working in the same company, sharing educational resources enables children to find suitable educational resources more widely and efficiently within the limited individual resources.


Normal communication among guardians in the community not only improves the flow of information, but also conveys the educational pressure appropriately which prompts parents to appropriately increase their spending on children's education. Thus, indirectly improving children's efficiency in acquiring knowledge and understanding ability. It also has to do with the herd mentality in society, where parents don't want their children to be educated at a disadvantage. In contrast, the educational resources in the same community or town are quite limited. Early investment in education allows children to spend more time outside the school to learn knowledge in different fields, so that the efficiency of understanding knowledge in different fields can be improved. When it comes to the distribution of educational resources and its limitations, we have to put forward a concept-- that is family income. There is a qualitative correlation between family income and children's ability to acquire knowledge, but most of them are reflected in their buffering and dependence on social resources. In other words, if there are enough educational resources in the society, or the proportion of family income in the community is at a high level compared to others, children will have sufficient educational resources and have a high ability to comprehend knowledge.


3. Children's social participation ability


At a macro level, community resources planning and land use planning affect children's insight and social participation. For example, there are more age-appropriate public resources near residential areas, such as libraries and parks, which are directly proportional to children's social participation. However, many businesses and supermarkets near residential areas have a negative impact on it. In addition, the social participation of children in areas with high population density is also higher than that in areas with low population density.


At a micro level, guardians' trust in society and social participation also directly or indirectly affect children's social participation ability. Moreover, the social capital and resources of each household also played a key role.


Conclusion


In communities and families, there are many existing factors that cannot be changed. However, learning how to change the deepest social structures and stereotypes, and how to make everyone in the community feel accepted, integrated, and willing to maintain good relations with the community is a common direction of our efforts. This direction will also bring a positive development to the community. For example, when the community’s communication and participation level are improved, the social security will also be improved. This will not only reduce the public security budget of the community, but also make the community more acceptable to new residents and improve the efficiency of resource sharing.



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