The Fridays on Main Street initiative for middle schoolers announced last week by Project Resilience organizers seems a thoughtful effort to deal constructively with a reality — “problem” seems too strong a word — that most adults remember, in some variation, from their own past.
Young folks like to go to town. They rove the streets and gather in flocks. They joke and flirt and flex the growing muscles of teenage socialization, laughing, shouting, showing off. Sometimes crowds get out of hand. Some kids do things they shouldn’t.
Something like this goes on most places. It’s a time-honored tradition in Ridgefield.
Today students from East Ridge Middle School are the concern. They have been for decades. But Ridgefielders who grew up here in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’70s can remember days when students from the old high school on East Ridge would flood the town after school, annoying adults and troubling merchants. A series of spots served as the central gathering place: Squash’s in the days when it had a soda fountain, later a restaurant called The Family Room, located where Steve’s Bagels is today.
The town’s decision to build the “new” high school out on North Salem Road, miles out of town, was widely believed to have been motivated by a desire to end of the after-school invasion of the village.
Writing about the Fridays on Main initiative in The Press last week, Dr. Carol Mahlstedt of Project Resilience said of the middle schoolers: “Learning how to socialize in less structured social situations is an important developmental step for them…” This seems even more true today. Kids growing up in Ridgefield are so often shuttled from one adult-run improvement program to another — sports practices, play rehearsals, music and dance, enrichment programs, tutoring and test prep. When they aren’t in a program, kids too often opt for the semi-isolation offered by the computer or smartphone screen.
Friday’s on Main strives for a nice balance of adult support and freedom for the young — kids agree to a code of conduct, and should feel some sense of ownership. They drop their backpacks at the church barn, get a snack, and head into town, returning to be picked up by parents.
To succeed it will need participation by the kids, and support — and patience — from the adults.