Quote From: shayna22 Marriage for romantic love is a modern concept: arranged marriages were common world wide notions just a century ago. My mother rejected the man that my grandfather arranged right here in NY. He was from the old country and she was quite modern. My grandparents eventually accepted my father a true love match. On their fiftieth anniversary the whole family celebrated in spite of the fact that my mother had violated my grandfather's wishes. We retell the story of their meeting as part of the family history; however, lessons are always drawn from it. The famous Fiddler on the Roof story shows how an Eastern European family experienced the challenge of change.
My students who came from Islamic cultures are experiencing the same challenges. In fact, one fourteen year old acknowleged that her future husband is waiting for her to return to the old country. The Sally Fields story "Not Without My Child" rings true for me. It is about an American girl who marries a physician in the US. His AMERICAN education and friends reveal that he had made the transition. Their lives as couple was quite modern. However, when he returns to his country in the middle east, he encounters the pull of his culture/ religion. His wife was unaware of how hard it had been for him in America.
Sally Fields ' character challenges her husband and winds up alienating his traditional family and loses her independence. The nightmare of her existence is remote for most of us; however, we don't understand that tthe cultural changes going on today are really recent and not everyone can embace the same world view of young love and devotion to family/tribe.
Yes tribe. Recently, we all witnessed the strange culture out west where young men
are provided simultaneously with multiple wives by their community. We see this as a horror in the general culture, but it is related to the difficulties women had in childbirth as well as the limited interaction between men and women. Plagues and communicable disease wiped out the weakest. Cultures wanted to assure themselves of the ability for the tribe/family could go on in spite of the challenges.
Our society, today, appears to be settling for multiple seqential marriages with divorce and joint custody. The gay community is challenging the status quo. It did not start here in America...but we are in an ongoing dialogue about it in our culture.
Within any society we are going to have variations. As our community continues to develop with a wide variety of social and religious groups, we will probably see even more variations and challenges to our way of life. Along with our wonderful car and airplane comes the ability to cross oceans and climb mountains. While I am in favor of my cultures' historical consistency, I know that my children have their own ideas that reflect their experiences and community.
While respecting differences, we must, however, be prepared to protect our young. Giving our children the privilege to communicate around the world comes witth the dangers that this sign in board is discussing.
Let's admit that mariage is under challenge and let's prepare our young for the full range of "styles" and options so that they are neither deceived nor put in danger. Courtship is one of the most beautiful parts of maturing to adulthood. Society's have always monitored and supervised young couples closely. Let's make sure our children know about the dangers and the joys of moving out of one's culture. Literature is filled with stories.
Continuity from one generation to the next is not always a force for bad but we need to provide our kids with tools to comprehend the world that is getting smaller all the time. Our kids have more than Howdy Doody and Our Mr Sun to build experiences upon. Parents must use their judgment about their children's skills in comprehending how much danger is lurking on both the information super highway and at the corner store.
However, some kids resist this kind of monitoring and parents need to take action; I am not clear how this child, Katherine, was able to leave the country without her parent's knowledge. Perhaps I am mistaken about some of the details. We as parents need to support an increase in the number of "tools" available to us. Let's not forget Shakespear's 14 year olds-- Romeo and Julliet. We are all horrified by the tragedy eventhough we appreciate their romantic love. They never even left town. In the meantime, when you find that your youngster is violating a safety rule, we need to step up to our discipline and monitoring.
During the K-12 initiative of the Internet, I introduced the Information Super Highway to a mmiddle school, long before we had a graphic world wide web (WWW). Yes it was text based and few kids were excited about talking to people from far away i.e. Finland to the Phillipines. I needed to insist that parents guide their youngsters. AOL was like the wild west and teens needed feedback on their choices at home. Monitoring their kids seemed outrageous to event the most educated. I felt like horrible, but I needed to sound the warning that kids can get into trouble. I advocated no personal information without parent permisssion. Before monitoring software was developed I encouraged parents to review print outs to provide feedback in spite of the fact that kids progressed faster than their parents. I continue to insist that my students avoid street addresses, town names, school names, family names and first names.
Its fun to be another character and hide behind a mask....Dr. Jeckyl and Mister Hyde are good stories for teens to learn about the dangers that we avoid. As parents we remember that we start with the boogie man and reassure children that it is our job to protect them from evil. Our lesson has to be reenforced without making our kids nervous nellies.
Stories like Katherine's remind us that we cannot sit back. I am not sure how I will use it to help my students but I will let you know. Good luck Katherine!
I truly hope that you are a teacher of our children. I hope there are more people like you out there teaching our children.I believe if this young man get over here and other young one we hear a bomb goes off three or four years from now we have forgot about a young man coming to the states for a young girl names Katherine and he was on Dr. Phil. we as a country we have short memoirs. I hope Dr. Phil Sees This And Remembers.
