Rockridge High School
Taylor Ridge, Illinois
Teacher: Barbara Downey
Is It Time For Local Communities To
Initiate A Right Of Passage For
American Youth?
By Chris Peschang
Grade 12
Life transitions. In the past they used to be laid out in front of kids. They knew exactly what they had to do to become "adults." Every culture seemed to have a "rite of passage." Some say that we again need to find a right of passage or America’s youth will suffer greatly. It is my opinion that a rite of passage is already somewhat in place, and if we push it and mold it correctly, we will soon have what adults are asking for.
I definitely agree with those who say that we need a rite of passage. When I was fifteen years old, two boys who looked no more than ten approached me and asked for a cigarette. I found it a little odd that while I had never thought of smoking, these kids who were not even out of grade school seemed to be dying for a cigarette. I was also surprised my freshman year of high school by the number of kids who drank before school or even during class. These are quite confusing situations because though kids seem to use drinking and smoking as rites of passage, can we really believe that a ten year old who smokes views himself as an adult? Moreover, I believe that kids would not do this if they had more positive role models. Right now most kids look up to famous people (rappers, rock stars, actors, athletes) who do not prove to be the best role models. With more and more of these people getting in trouble with addictions and the law, today’s youth need to be able to find positive role models somewhere in their lives.
Right now, I think we kids have a relatively easy rite of passage that is often overlooked by most adults. We have had the passage from students to working adults in place since the beginning of time. Kids are prepared for this passage through cooperative education programs and college. For those who do not plan on going to college, most schools have excellent cooperative education programs which teach the kids job skills and place them in a job that they can continue upon graduation from high school. This teaches kids to work alongside adults, as well as giving them a glimpse of future job opportunities. For kids who desire more than a high school education, I believe that they have an excellent rite of passage laid before them in the trials they go through to move on to college. I think that high school is no more than a proving ground for students, a place where they show their potential for learning and where they find out what areas they excel at so that they can better choose a course of college study and, eventually, a profession. High school serves as an excellent rite of passage for college-bound students.
However, these rites of passage do seem mediocre when compared to the hardships that kids once had to endure. Moreover, they just do not seem adequate at proving that one is ready to be called an adult. In my opinion, all kids need to work side by side with adults so that they learn to behave and operate on an adult level. It is one thing for kids to learn from adults in a cooperative education type setting, but it is quite another to have adults working with kids and maybe even partially relying on kids to help them get their work done. To become more like adults kids need to share in the responsibilities of adulthood. Through my personal experience, community service gives you and excellent felling of responsibility and also teaches you to work with adults toward a common goal. When I was fifteen years old I worked with Hearts and Hammers and helped restore a family’s old, run down house. We were all working on a set time frame, and the adults there relied heavily upon the kids to help them finish the job. This gave me an excellent feeling of responsibility because I knew that if I did not get my job done, it would hurt the whole crew. Working side by side with adults helps kids elevate to a more responsible level of thinking because they are not working for their own personal benefit; they are working to help others. Having more instances where adults work alongside and rely heavily upon kids is my idea on how to develop a rite of passage that will sculpt America’s youth into responsible adults.
As I have said, there are a few unknown rites of passage in today’s society. However, these seem very insufficient when compared to past rites of passage, and even when looked upon as something to turn kids into adults. It is our society as a whole’s job to create a new rite of passage that not only proves that young people are ready to become adults, but also proves that they can work alongside adults toward a common goal—the betterment of our world.
Questions
Q1) In the 1961 Preface to Coming of Age in Samoa Margaret Mead talks about young people in the United States who are "becoming less than they might be…." This sounds very similar to the Army recruiting commercial that says, "Be all that you can be."
Q2) I believe that the importance of the language spoken at home is still an issue today. If someone cannot speak English, they have trouble learning and interacting with others. I definitely believe that familial pressures on children are definitely an issue today. With more and more parents who want their kids to do well so that they can have a better life than their parents did, the kids feel a tremendous amount of pressure. Kids feel that they have to be the best because their parents have drilled that into their heads from the day that they were born. In my opinion, misconceptions about race and color are still an issue, no matter how small an issue some may say they are. Being that I come from a small, predominantly white community, I think that I notice it more than most. It seems that the misconceptions are lessening year by year, though. I do not think that the effects of artificially separating children from a knowledge of birth, love, and death is an issue at all today.
Q3) I agree with this to a certain point. I do believe that culture is man made and that man is free to design it. One man though, cannot design culture. For culture to be changed you need lots of people collectively working together towards a common change or goal.
Q4) In Margaret Mead’s writings she was advocating greater
knowledge and control over the civilizing process.
Q5) I do not think that kids really want adults to recognize what is going on and enforce boundaries and structure. Kids do not really want adults to know everything that is going on in their lives. They need the ability to do what they want without having to worry about adults. Kids need to be free to make mistakes so that they can learn from them.
Q6) I have seen many things concerning drugs or alcohol at my school. Many people drink before they come to school, and I have even seen a few drinking out of flasks in plain sight while at school. Also, if I keep myself aware in the halls I can usually see someone buying drugs or alcohol, especially on Fridays and Mondays because they are right next to the weekends. On top of this, last year when the drug sniffing dogs came, I saw many people from my classes and others scrambling to hide the drugs that they were carrying so that the police would not catch them.
Q7) I do not really see a solution for blacks in the near future. This is partially caused by the small percentage of the black race that is seen on the evening news for drug dealing, murders, and gang wars. That is all many people need to stereotype all blacks as bad people. The problem is that most blacks are not like that. They, like whites, have a few bad seeds but in their case it ruins all blacks’ reputations. As long as people are closed-minded and keep their racial misconceptions, there will be no solution for the "plight of the black teenager."
Q8) I do not think that it would be a relief if I was home-schooled or went to a single-sex private school so that all I had to do was "go to class and learn." I think that I learn more at the school that I am going to than I could any other way because I am learning how to interact with other people. School teaches you how to interact with people of all ages, from your teachers to kids that are younger than you. It also teaches you how to act around people of the opposite sex and people who you do not necessarily get along with. All of these are things that need to be learned by the time you enter the adult world. I also believe that your peers admire learning wherever you go.
Q9) I think that there already are classes that incorporate community-based learning in school. I do not believe that you need much of this type of learning if you plan to continue your education in college. For those who go to college, high school is nothing more than proof to the college that you can learn and will work hard to become the most that you can. A college does not care if you have hands on experience in any particular field because things change so quickly today that what you learned in that field may be obsolete by your second year of college. Furthermore, since there is no way to know exactly what one will be doing after they graduate from college, it would be extremely hard for high schools to place every student in the right position for their community-based learning. For those who are not planning on going to college, I think that our school has an excellent community-based learning program and many students take advantage of it to get a head start on others as they look toward their future outside of high school walls.
Q10) I agree with the "bottom line" because I think that adults should get more involved in kids lives. I think that if this happened the country would see a dramatic decline in the trouble it is having controlling and even understanding today’s youth. The more adults move to help kids and open up to them, the more we kids will do the same.