Suburbia: Inappropriate Growing Environment :: Suburbs Education Learning Essays

Suburbia: Inappropriate Growing Environment There's a reason people go to school in their youth rather than after they get older. It's because the childhood years are the ones during which the potential for learning is the greatest. Youths' impressionable minds have far less trouble picking up important concepts like mathematics and grammar than do adults'--in fact, young minds seem oftentimes to learn automatically or accidentally. It stands to reason, therefore, that adults should take advantage of that impressionability to educate the leaders of the future in areas such as art, basic economy, and interpersonal behavior while their chances of learning are still so great. In a world and a time where the quest to become a functional and productive member of society is such a difficult one and so rarely completed, one can't help feeling that it's absolutely imperative that those in charge of raising the next generation ensure that they do so under the best possible circumstances: that is, in a living environment conducive to intellectual and emotional challenge and growth. However, such is clearly not always the case. As a place to develop and mature, one of the worst locales in America--and possibly the most misjudged--is suburbia. A vast wasteland of dressed-up emptiness, the typical suburban town promises an idyll it could never truly hope to deliver. An attempt at compromise between the country and the city, it instead combines the worst aspects of both. And as we shall see, children who grow up in this abyss will find their social lives constantly lacking and their cultural needs rarely met. The causes of these shortcomings of the suburban town are firmly rooted in its geographical and political structure, as well as in the attitudes of many suburban adults. Geography "The suburbs represent the triumph of accessibility over proximity," writes Harlan Paul Douglass in his 1920s book The Suburban Trend (187). Douglass is writing to defend his home--in his own words, an "apologia for suburban life"--but he appears sadly unaware of the sinister truth to his statement (v). Indeed, some semblance of indiscriminate accessibility is a reality in the suburbs--for people of means. That is to say, people who can drive, or who live near public transportation routes. Children tend not to fall into either of these categories. On the one hand, most are too young to get driver’s licenses or too poor to pay for a car and auto insurance. On the other, even those who live within walking distance of mass transit systems may find its cost prohibitive, or else their parents may forbid them to use it for fear of what kind of people they'll meet.