Centerville High School

Centerville, South Dakota
Teacher: Mitch Russell

 

 

 

A Materialistic Society
By Derek Jaeger

 

 

I do not feel that the community needs to give the American adolescent a rite of passage.  I believe that many people who are approaching the stage would rather do things on their own.  Making it through adolescence on your own and surviving is more of a rite of passage than anything that can be done by the community.  It is a trial by fire.  If you make it on your own, you are much more proud than if you rely on others to help you.   

 

I believe much of the strain placed on adolescents can be attributed to cultural changes rather than physiological changes.  I believe this because in older times, things that are considered unacceptable now were commonplace, such as teens having intimate relationships before marriage, smoking cigarettes, and drug use.  Nowadays, if an adolescent is found to be doing any of these things, he is automatically assumed to be a bad kid.  That is one of the major problems in society, is the prejudice views of the American adult towards the adolescents. 

 

Many cultures are man made, and ours is especially.  It is a culture that values material goods and money above all things.  There are several ways that we could infuse character and other values into our society.  Instead of paying for everything in money, we could receive little “gifts” for being a nice person or a good citizen.  We could also go through and eliminate the high priced items that some people can’t afford.  That way everyone would have the same things, and no one would look down upon others for not having as nice of things as other people.

 

Children know many things that they do are useful to society.  I, for example, have a job at the nursing home, where I work about 30 hours a week.  I know that I am helping out society by helping or assisting the elderly people under my care.  Other adolescents, such as Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts, are helpful when they do food drives for the less fortunate people of America.  Many adults look past all the good that adolescents do for the world, which is unfortunate, because by only looking at the bad in adolescents, they don’t get to know them, and lose out on a great opportunity to know the future.

 

There are many choices that adolescents have to make in these current times of trouble, but that is what builds character in adolescents.  They need to make their own decisions.  Making your own choices teaches the youth of America responsibility, because they must deal with the consequences of their own decisions.  If they don’t do anything on their own, they will not know how to live on their own later in life.  I would rather have children make their own choices, because it teaches them, and it allows them to be free.  It is stressful, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. 

 

The Samoan child’s actions are put into terms of usefulness to the community.  How they behave is dignified in terms of their relationship to the life of the village.  In America, children are regarded as “too stupid” to be useful.  All too often their behavior is ignored, because “they don’t know any better”.  How are children supposed to learn to be good human beings when they aren’t punished for doing something wrong?  When I was young, I was punished for my mistakes, and I learned from them. Nowadays, you can’t even spank your kids when they misbehave.  Is it any wonder that kids are behaving worse and worse?  Kids should be rewarded for doing good, and punished for being naughty.

 

Potlach-North American Indian culture says that if one succeeds, that he should give away all of his valuable goods and start over, to reprove himself.  I feel that this is a bad idea, because if you succeed in life, why should you give your rewards to the poor people who have not proved themselves to the world.  As for not rising too high above your neighbors, maybe you should move to a richer section of town.  You have finally reaped what you have sown.  Why should you be punished?In the United States, time that children devote to supervised activity is made to feel like it doesn’t matter.  For example, in sports, children could be out causing trouble, but they are out devoting their time to supervised activity.  But instead of being rewarded for their efforts, they are looked upon by adults as wasting time.  After all, they could be out working, but they’re not.  They’re just going and playing football, or basketball, or whatever they happen to be in. 

 

Children need to be given more respect than they are.  Adults always ask why children don’t respect them, why don’t adults respect children?  After all, we aren’t as dumb as adults think we are.

 

Answers To Questions From Required Reading

 

Question 1- Margaret Mead says that you should live up to your potential, like the Army’s phrase, “Be All You Can Be.”

 

Question 2- All of the issues addressed in question 2, the importance of language spoken in the home, 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 still existing and being talked about in the American home.

 

Question 3- 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.  My definition of culture is a set of attitudes and beliefs by a person or group.

 

Question 4- Margaret Mead is an advocate for greater knowledge and control over the civilizing process in her writings.

 

Question 5- In a speech in A Tribe Apart, a woman named Susan wondered if adolescents wanted adults to recognize what is going on and to impose boundaries, which I agree with to an extent.  I agree that they need to try to help, but they will not get anywhere by trying to impose strict boundaries and punishing you when you get in trouble.

 

Question 6- Three things that I have seen or experienced, or know for a fact happen, is kids smoking at noon, chewing at noon, and drinking until they puke.

 

Question 7- my only solution for the plight of the black teen-ager is to not give whites reasons to stereotype their race.

 

Question 8- I would be happy if all I had to do was go to school and learn, but I would not like to go to a private school, or a same sex school, where academics are rewarded.

 

Question 9- I agree with Pete Seeger that schools “are like prisons because they don’t teach you how to live.” and also with another statement by a kid named Jonathan, who commented,” People in school are dulled by the remoteness to the real world.”  Incorporating classes with community-based learning would be helpful because most of what you learn in school is irrelevant, so why should we learn how to solve Algebra problems that don’t help when we could go out and get some practical learning in the real world.

 

Question 10- The view expressed in the bottom line is a valid view, with many good points, but I also feel that although there are these problems in some areas, in other areas, it isn’t really that much of a problem.