Concordia High School
Concordia, Kansas

 

Comparing Cultural Rites of Passage 

A United States' Rite of Passage
Brittany R. Toll

Grade 12

 

 

Our culture today needs a rite of passage for today’s adolescents.  Adolescents in the United States are brought up to think that adulthood means they are able to drink, smoke, and do whatever they want, but being an adult means much more.  It means responsibility and doing the right thing no matter what. Adolescents would become more responsible adults if they had to complete a rite of passage.  Something that would make the people who they respect, the elders, respect them. A rite of passage would make society look on adolescents with a deeper regard and admiration for tomorrow’s generation.  What could adolescents do for a right of passage?  There are many solutions to that question.

           

Communities and schools could require community service.  This is an excellent way to get adolescents involved in the community and to start learning how to become responsible adults. The appropriate time to start community service would be during junior high or even sooner.  As career expert Barbara Moses stated, “Children learn about how the world operates; its rules, roles, and expectations and about their emotions and sense of self through free play.”  Schools could require that the students must complete a specified number of community service hours per semester for however many semesters the community, school, or students think is appropriate.  By pushing students out into the community, the students will learn how the community works and depend on each other in order to achieve their goals.  Patricia Hersch commented that, “Adolescents have learned to become adults by observing, imitating and interacting with grownups around them.”  The community can set an example that students will want to follow.  A supportive community will raise student’s moral and make that student want to achieve.  Some examples of community service would be to have students shovel snow off of sidewalks, teach a young child how to play a game or swim, give a community concert, tour nursing homes, or even to collect cans of food to distribute to the needy.

 

One solution to that question is to ask an adolescent what they think he or she could do to make society look upon them more favorably.  Each individual has his or her own talents.  By asking them what they would like to do, they could use their own talents.  People always learn more and are more encouraged to do an excellent job when it something that they enjoy doing.  They tend to go beyond their means to do the best they can.  Schools could initiate a program that would require a student to do a project of his or her own choice that would benefit the community or help a person in that community.  This rite of passage could be required for a year or for all four years of high school.  The longer the project is carried on for, the more the students will become involved in it.  For example, if there is a young adolescent who loves to cook and bake things. They could use her abilities to make food and/or treats for a poor family, a sick individual, or even help make prepare food for a large banquet.  Another young individual may have the gift of being able to make friends with anyone.  That person could use his gift by going out and helping adults who do not know how to socialize or cannot go out into the community because of an illness.  That one person could bring light and cheer to many people whom otherwise might have been sitting alone in their homes.  By doing this, adults could see that adolescents really do take pride in and care about their community.  Adults would feel that when they grow old, they will be taken care of by a generation that does not shirk their duty as an involved citizen and resident in their community.

 

Fundraising for a homeless or needy family or orphanage would be a very benevolent way to show adolescents how to become a responsible adult.  Even adopting a person in a nursing home as a grandparent or a child in a third world country would be and excellent right of passage.  This would make adolescents take individual responsibility for one person or a family of people. This would give them a superior way to learn how to become a mature and reliable adult.  Schools could help organize this by putting up a list of people who need an extra hand or to whom would just like to talk to someone.  Students would not even have to go look at a list to find a person in need.  They only have to go into a nursing home to find someone who needs their help or care. This rite of passage would really make adults respect and think of our generation positively.  It would also benefit the students.  As Patricia Hersch observed, “Every adolescent needs a mentor…Kids need adults to listen to them and serve as role models.  Grownups who, by their availability and presence, convey a sense of safety and control.”

           

These rites of passage would make the adult world see that adolescents are serious about responsibility and want to strive to become better people.  Adolescents want to become part of society but do not know how.  Initiating a right of passage for adolescents would show adolescents part of what being an adult means.  It would not only cause adults to respect the adolescents more, but it would also cause the adolescents to respect the adults more for what they do.  It is a tough job being an adult, and initiating a rite of passage would make adolescents see that being an adult is not always a blessing.  Though becoming an adult is a tremendous occasion, adolescents need to know that when one becomes an adult, one is accepting an enormous weight upon one’s shoulders.

Works Cited

 

Hersch, Patricia.  A Tribe Apart: A Journey Into the Heart of American Adolescence  Balantine Publishing Group, 1998.  13 October 1999. 

Moses, Barbara.  Career Advice for Kids: Play More  Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., 1998.  13 October 1999. 

Q1-What does Margaret Mead say at the start of her 1961 Preface to Coming OfAge In Somoa that is reminiscent of a current recruiting commercial? She is basically saying, "Be all that you can be."

Q2-Which of the following issues of the 1920's are no longer issues today?       1. The importance of the language spoken in the home 2. Familial pressures on children  3. Misconceptions about race and color 4. The effects of artificially separating children from a knowledge of birth, love, and death 4. The effects of artificially separating children from a knowledge of birth, love, and death

Q3-Do you 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"9 What definition of "culture" do you find in your dictionary? In many ways culture is man-made, but I believe that one individual person or group can design it closer to the "desires of his own heart." There are too many people in this world with their own beliefs and desires that it would be virtually impossible to make them all desire one thing. The definition of "culture" that we find in the dictionary is "a civilization or civilizations of people including the beliefs and actions of those people."

Q4-In her writings Margaret Mead was advocating: 1. a return to primitive ways 2. greater knowledge and control over the civilizing process 3. an integration of the primitive and civilized 4. none of the above 2. greater knowledge and control over the civilizing process

Q5-Comment on Susan's speech (page 60 A Tribe Apart). Do you and your peers really want adults to recognize what is going on and to enforce "boundaries and structure”? I believe that teens are searching for some sort of structure. That structure that they are searching for is the family. The family needs to set reasonable boundaries. I believe that as teens grow older, these boundaries can slowly be removed as the teen begins to gain more responsibility. Teens need someone to listen to them and to guide them. Families can give teens this support network while also allowing them the necessary freedoms to grow up.

Q6-Write three things that you "absolutely, positively know, saw or experienced concerning drugs and alcohol among" students at your school. I have seen someone get caught for bringing whiskey to school. I hear students talking about getting drunk at parties. I also hear about what kind of alcohol students like to drink.

Q7-Do you have a solution for the "plight of the black teenager"9 (page 88 A Tribe Apart) People need to learn to tolerate other people and not to be so stereotypical. We need to actually get to know a person of another race before we judge them, and even then we cannot assume that all the people of that race are the same way. Each individual person is different and unique. One solution is to have a group people of opposite races together work together. When I worked in Texas this summer, I found that some of the nicest people I worked with were black people. If other people would just open their eyes, maybe they would see that the black race has many promising and talented young individuals.

Q8-Would it be a relief if all you had to do was "go to classes and learn"?  Would you be happy if you were home-schooled or attended a single-sex private school where academics were presented in an exciting way and learning was admired even by peers? Yes, it would be a relief if all I had to do were to "go to classes and learn." I believe I would learn more if we did not have to spend half of our class period on people with behavioral problems. I would be relatively unaffected if I attended a single-sex private school. However, I would not like to be home-schooled. I love to participate in activities such as band and be able to have friends. If I were home-schooled, I would not be able to meet and cooperate with new people. I believe that public schools are great in this aspect. Public schools are a great place to form lasting relationships and learn how to be active in the community.

Q9-Comment on the line from Pete Seeger:  “Schools are like prisons because they don’t teach you how to live.” and Jonathan’s comment “People in school are dulled by the remoteness to the real world.”  Would more classes incorporating community-based learning be helpful?  (incorporating activities with relevance to actual real life situations) Today, schools have basically become a secondary care center. Parents often send their children off to school to keep them out of trouble without inspiring them to want to stay out of trouble. Seeger was commenting that schools have become like prisons because they require us to be here from eight in the morning to three o'clock in the afternoon. Schools require that we students be here to learn. However, the schools have become more concerned with their standardized test scores than teaching students how to survive in today's world. How can students be expected to know

how the real world works when we are kept within the schools boundaries and not allowed to look for ourselves. Jonathan's comment illustrates that students do not learn about the real

world unless they are subjected to it. Schools need to focus on giving students more skills and teaching them how to live in today’s world rather than how well their students are doing compared to other schools, states, or countries.  Schools need to teach students how to live.  By taking the students out of the schools and placing them in the community, I believe students would learn more about how the real world works.

 

Q10-Comment on the “bottom line” (page 364 A Tribe Apart).

Teens need adult companionship.  They need some direction in their lives.  Adults can show teens the way; they can teach teens how to be responsible, caring adults.  Teens are going through a difficult time.  They are confused by all the decisions they have to make and need guidance and understanding.  Adults can show students how to survive in our ever-changing society.