Reflection # 5

Although our teaching and rites of passage is somewhat different from the rites of passages in the stories "Siiting Quieitly", "Facing Mt Kenya", and the "Sambia" they are all pretty much for the sme purpose. That purpiose is to teach the child to prepare for the real world and changing them from immature children to adulthood. Here in America the child transitions throughtout each grade. They are taught to read, they learn math, and at higher levels they learn how to do things they will need to kno throughout life. For example, they have home economic classes where the child will lern to cook. There is human groth and development classes where the child learns where babies really do come from and they learn about sex. Even at home the child learns many things that she/he will have to know to survive when they are adults. Our children here may not go throught what the children in those articles go through but they are learning for the same purpose which is to become adults. In the article "Sambia" the boys go through much more to become a young man in their rites of passages but while they are going through these things there is a lot of teacing and learnin going on. They are taught that a woman's vagina is dangerous to growing boys and that the young men will become stronger by drinking semen from penises that have not been in a vagina yet,. When the man becomes older he has sex with his wife so that they can have a baby. Once he has done this he can only have sex with a woman. They don't see sex as only pleasure the way we do but as a duty. Just like our education programs the whole purpose for their rites of passage was for the young men to be taught and for them to learn what a man's purpose is so thta they can become sucessful when they are grown men. "facing mt Kenya" is a rite of passage for both sexes. They sre circumsized and was the ceremony is over they are considered adults. They are told to never look back and they can not participate in the activities that a child would participate in. They get this done to them at a young age. The girl gets it done before she even had her period. I think it's safe to say that children in these tribes start their adulthood lives way before children in America.