Centerville High School

Centerville, South Dakota
Teacher: Mitch Russell

 

 

Everyone Is Needed
By Greg Holmberg

 

 

As in the Potlatch-North American Indian tradition of “When all goes well and there is money in the house and neighbors think kindly of you, maybe it’s proper for you to give it all away and start over.  Maybe you must prove yourself again.  Maybe you must not rise too high above  your neighbors.”  I think that in that statement there are good and bad points. 

 

I think that it is good not to be greedy or to think of yourself as better than  others, but I don’t think that the government should make you abide by things like this. 

An example of this is when the government declared the Microsoft corporation as a monopoly and forced it to separate parts of it’s business.  I believe that if a person or a business works it’s way up to having the most customers, the government should not be able to have control over those things.  I also believe that if you have money in the house, like the statement said, you should be generous with your money and give to charities and needy causes, but I don’t think that you should have to built up your economic status more than once.  If you work hard at what you do, to build up your economic status it shouldn’t be required that you start all over with nothing.

 

In response to the statement “To whom much is given, much is required. Freedom is demanding.  Choice is stressful, and in the question,“ Would we have it otherwise?” I believe that this statement is true. In today’s society, as a teenager, I also believe that a lot of things are given to us, yet there is a lot expected of us. Some of the things that teenagers today are given could be a car to drive, financial aid, and freedom to do things that were not allowed in past generations.  Along with all of the new freedoms there are also a lot of things required of today’s teens.  Today’s teens, along with teens of the past,

are required to get good grades, stay out of trouble, and to do some work.

           

I think that teens are faced with many choices such as whether to find a job or go to college ,or if you are going to college, which college to go to.  Other pressures that teens face are whether to drink, smoke, or do other dangerous things.  During the teenage period, you feel the pressure of many things that adults want you to do.  Adults always think that they know what is best for teenagers, because they where once teenagers.  Adults don’t know what all of the issues that face teenagers today.

 

“In Samoa in the 1920’s, Margaret Mead found that adolescence was not a time of stress at it is in America.”   In Samoa a person life cycle goes from a child directly to an adult, yet in America there is a time between childhood and adulthood called adolescence.  In this period of adolescence, a person is not expected to know everything yet is expected to behave more maturely than a child. 

 

In many cultures there isn’t a time in one’s life known as adolescence.  In these cultures the children are taught to take on jobs that effect the whole community. These jobs that are performed by the children are assigned to them based on the child’s strength or how smart they are.

 

In America children don’t go directly in the adult stage of life and are assigned jobs that are not very meaningful or have great importance.  People going through this

time of adolescence don’t feel that the adults in the community think that they are very important to the scheme of things in life.  I think that if adolescents had reasons to feel that they where really needed as a part of the community things would be better. In the statement and question, “Children realize our society values money above all.  How might we infuse character and other values in our communities?” I believe that the statement given is absolutely true and that the world would be a better place if money were not so important to everyone. Money today is held higher than many of the things that used to be important, like values and good character.  To get some of the values and character back in people I think that people should do more things to help out the community. People should do volunteer work and other things that they don’t to get paid for. If people would not think that money was the most important thing today there would be less crime and we would have better people. 

 

Questions

 

Question 1

I think that Margaret Mead believed that people are becoming less than they can be.

 

Question 2

The 1920 issues of the importance of the language spoken in the home, familial pressures, misconceptions, and the effects of artificially separating children from a knowledge of birth, love and death are still issues today.

 

Question 3

I agree with Margaret Mead that culture is man made. To me culture means how a group of people act and deal with things.

 

Question4

Mead was advocating greater knowledge and control over the civilizing process in her writings.

 

Question 5

I think that Susan’s speech is right that youth need some limits but they also need freedom.

 

Question6

Three things that I saw dealing with alcohol are tobacco in school, people with beer, and smoking during noon break.

 

Question 7

I think that the solution to the plight of the black teenager is that African Americans can help them selves by not bring themselves down.

 

Question 8

I think that it would be a relief in some aspects to go to a school that only dealt with academics so there wouldn’t be the pressure of other things. I wouldn’t like to be home schooled or go to a school that only deals with academics.

 

Question 9

I think that Pete Seeger was right when he said that “schools were like prisons because they don’t teach you how to live” school doesn’t teach you how to live but that is stuff that should be learned on one’s own.

 

Question 10

I think that the bottom line was used to sum up the whole section.