Centerville High School

Centerville, South Dakota
Teacher: Mitch Russell

 

 

“Where Much Is Given, Much Is Required”
By Cody DeBondt

 

 

I agree that much is given, but much is required.  This is very true, for example, in school. Grades are given, but to get an A, it is required to work hard, study, and pay attention.  I also think that choices are very stressful.  You will have to make many stressful decisions or choices in your life and it will not be easy.  I do not think I would like to have it any other way. 

 

In Samoa in the 1920’s, Margaret mead found that adolescence was not a stressful in America.  What she said is very true, and the main reason I think this is because in Samoa there are not any adolescents.  The child moves from being a child straight to an adult.  The child is looked upon as an adult and treated the same or equal to an adult.  In Samoa there is not an adjustment.  I think this is very good.  This means there is not an acquired stage in the young adult’s life like most young American adults. 

 

This could be good in some ways; however, it could also be bad in some ways, too.  Like the time in a kid’s life when he/she needs to be excepted, in Samoa there is not an acceptance time period.  In America, youth have an acceptance period that can lead to gangs, drugs, or other things that kids might think will help them become more excepted.  The good thing about Samoa is there is not an acceptance period so kids don’t think they have to go out and try these bad things. 

 

My opinion is in Samoa they live a sheltered life and don’t get to experience these kinds of things.  So in a way this is good, but it also can be bad.  Of course the bad thing is the Samoan children or young adults do not get as much experience to the real world.  This is okay if the Samoa children are never going to leave their village, but if the children are going to leave then they will not be caught up with the outside world.  The thing that is absent in America compared to Samoa is that in Samoa there are not any adolescents, and in America there are adolescents.

 

In a small town in upstate New York, a young boy was picked up by the cops last week.  This fourteen-year-old boy had possession of drugs on him at the time.  He also had tattoos on his body that were gang related.  This hypothetical situation could happen anywhere in America.  Youth doing drugs and having tattoos are clear signs and the down side of what I call the acceptance time period for American kids today.   Youth today can get caught up in adolescence, and this shows just how the acceptance period can be.

 

Margaret Mead found Samoan children as young as four and five that had definite tasks graded to their strength and intelligence.  These tasks had a meaning in the whole society, and that the child’s task was obvious to everyone in the tribe.  These tasks were on the same scale as the adults but just smaller jobs to do.  In America there is really nothing like this.

 

The only thing I can think of that is like that is my family.  My younger sister has to do chores; these chores are just not as big as the chores I have to do.  I think of myself as a younger adult and my sister as a child.  The chores that she does are on a smaller scale of the chores I do but at least she has to do some chores.  Some families don’t require their kids to do chores and that is why the kids don’t feel that they are needed or don’t feel useful around the house. 

 

I most definitely think the strain on our adolescents is contributed by our cultural problems opposed to physiological problems.  Just look back twenty years ago when my father was my age, things were very different.   What he had to do for chores or the grades he got in school is very different than what I have to do.  The things that were acceptable back then are not acceptable now.  Things changes and that’s why we have cultural problems.  The reason it is not physiological is because we as the people that are in the adolescence stage or were in the adolescence stage don’t worry so much about zits or hair problem.  I think people worry more about peer pressure and other important stuff, and that is why cultural problems cause a bigger strain than physiological problems do.  

 

Answers To Required Reading

 

Question 1

Margaret Mead said at the start of her 1961 Preface to Coming of Age in Samoa is “we understood so little about what is in the US we were becoming less than they might be, because the difference culture can make.”

 

Question 2

The importance of the language spoken in the house, familial pressures on children, misconceptions about race and color, and the effects of artificially separating children from a knowledge of birth, love, and death are all issues of the 1920’s that are still issues today.

 

Question 3

Yes I agree with Margaret Mead that “culture is man-made and that man is free to design it closer to the desires of his own heart?”  The definition of “culture” is a set of attitudes of what the world is made up of, the stuff around us, and how we use things.

 

Question 4

Margaret Mead was advocating in her writing about greater knowledge and control over the civilizing process.

 

Question 5

Yes, I want adults to recognize what is going on and to enforce “boundaries and structure” because I think we need more boundaries and structure in our lives.

 

Question 6

Three things that I “absolutely, positively know, saw or experienced concerning drugs and alcohol among students at your school” is smoking a cigarette can make you puke, Drinking makes you throw up, and Drinking makes you act CRAZY.

 

Question 7

The way that society is today, there is no solution for plight of the black teenagers.

 

Question 8

Yes, it would be a relief if all I had to do were just “go to classes and learn”.  No, I would not be happy if I were home-schooled or attended a single-sex private school because I go to school to communicate and for the girls.

 

Question 9

Yes, schools are like prisons because they don’t teach you how to live. More classes in the incorporating community-based learning would be helpful because you would learn more when you get out in the real world.

 

Question 10

I think the idea about parents being more involved is good, because if a kid is going to go out drinking, it would be better for the kid to stay home and drink and not to go out driving around and drinking.