Centerville High School

Centerville, South Dakota

Teacher: Terri Buechler

 

Is It Time For Local Communities To Institute
A Rite Of Passage For American Youth?

By Nicole Cada

Junior

 

I believe that in the United States, even seventy years ago, a child’s attitude toward school was apathetic! School then, as now, bore no relation to life. Today children go to school and do not even want to be there, they would rather be out hanging around with their friends.

 

I think this is partly because of the way a teacher teaches their class. Some teachers have a unique way of teaching and are able to get and hold on to the children’s attention. When a teacher is not interesting to the student, the student will “zone” out. When the student doesn’t listen they miss what’s going on. If they miss what’s going on they will be mad and think it’s boring because they do not know what the teacher is talking about.

 

I do not blame the teachers entirely for a child not learning; it’s the really all up to the child. It’s the child’s decision if they want to be taught something. On a nice day children usually do not want to be stuck in school learning something they will never use when they are older. We have to learn so many different things that have no relevance to real life. When will we ever need to know how much xy+z equals? Why do we have to know when some President dies, how much an atom ways, or even learning the periodic table of elements. How can we put all of these things to use in our everyday life? We really can’t, unless you are planning to be a scientist or a history teacher, but even if you were planning to become one of those you have to learn all of that information over again in college. Children who think that they will not need what is being taught in school will act out and will more likely be the class “trouble maker”.

 

Could the strain our adolescents encounter be attributed to the cultural rather than physiological changes? Is it the stress in our civilization? I believe this is true because adolescents are faced with many more problems like drugs, smoking, alcohol, and even violence.

 

In the past children were able to go to school and not have to worry about getting shot or even if they want to buy drugs. Adolescents today have to make the right choices about these conflicting issues. If they make the wrong choices they can mess up their whole life. That is why I believe that there is a lot of pressure on adolescents to do the “right” things and that is why they act out. If a child doesn’t make the right decisions they get into trouble.

 

Potlatch-North American tradition: “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 to yourself again. Maybe you must not rise to high above your neighbors.”

 

I believe this is true because if you I were to win the lottery tomorrow, I know I would have a lot more friends than I used to. You would see how many people would need favors from you, and how much nicer people are to you. If you were to throw all your money away and have none, then people want to have nothing to do with you. People, who think that you have a lot of money, will automatically think that you are better then them, and they will want to have nothing to do with you.

 

The upbringing of children is the same way. The way an adolescent acts reflects how they were brought up. If a child is disrespectful and rude to others, especially their elders, then their parents are regarded as bad parents. I do not believe that parents are totally to blame for their children’s actions. When a child goes to school the parents are not there to see if they behave, so there for the parents are not all to blame. If a child chooses to act out in school or anywhere else they are that their parents are not, then how could you blame parents? People say that does not matter because if a child was brought up the “correct” way then they will not act out. I do not believe that because I was brought up to have respect for others property, but if I wanted to go out and commit a crime, I would do it, its my decision and nobody could stop me from making my own decisions. There is no way you could blame my parents, the choices I make are mine, and if I want to do something that may not be right to others then I’m just going to do it.

 

Answers To Questions

 

Q1- What Margaret Mead said at the start of her 1961 Preface to Coming Of Age In Samoa that is reminiscent of a current Army recruiting commercial is that in the U.S. were becoming less than they might because we understood so little about what a difference in culture can make.

 

Q2- The effects of artificially separating children from a knowledge of birth, love and death is one of the issues that is no longer an issue today.

 

Q3- 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” because people make their own choices in life and that influences them. The dictionary meaning of culture is the way people act, live, and their own set of beliefs.

 

Q4- In her writings Margaret Mead was advocating a greater knowledge and control over the civilizing process.

 

Q5- I think that peers want adults to recognize what is going on to a certain point, children want boundaries and rules, and where there are none, children act out.

 

Q6- Three things that I absolutely, positively know, saw or experienced concerning drugs and alcohol among students” was at my school in Chicago, I saw kids selling, using, and fighting over drugs.

 

Q7- There is no solution for “plight of the black teenager”, except that the African Americans should not overreact to everything that is said to them, everybody is not out to get them.

 

Q8- It would be a relief to go to class and just learn because everyday you have to deal with new problems, or other things between other students. Home-school would be good and bad, because you wouldn’t have to get up early to go to school. A bad reason would be that children need to have social lives and they need to have friends.

 

Q9- “Schools are like prisons because they do not teach you how to live”, I think this is true because we have to learn more stuff in school that we will never need or use in the “real world”. More classes with community-based learning would be helpful because children would be able to deal with the outside world better.

 

Q10- The “bottom Line”, the comments I have for this is that adolescents and younger children smoke and drink because they want to be like the older, “cooler” kids who are doing it.