Anzar, like many other schools, has an extremely diverse
culture, one with many ethnicities and beliefs. Although we are
told how to dress and how to spend our afternoons (cramming and
doing homework), we control our own interactions with the people
around us.
It is said that schools can be seen as models of society. We
have our own social classes; we work (or not); and even though we
aren’t fully capable of controlling our lives outside of school,
what we can control within school is ours to do with what we
will.
We even have our own government system, but there is still a
problem with the idea of school being a model of society.
Anzar, like many other schools, has an extremely diverse culture, one with many ethnicities and beliefs. Although we are told how to dress and how to spend our afternoons (cramming and doing homework), we control our own interactions with the people around us.
It is said that schools can be seen as models of society. We have our own social classes; we work (or not); and even though we aren’t fully capable of controlling our lives outside of school, what we can control within school is ours to do with what we will.
We even have our own government system, but there is still a problem with the idea of school being a model of society. Teenagers have parents and having that outside force beyond our own government changes things, especially when this outside force dictates or shapes our belief system.
Typically, people are born with parents and live with some sort of family until they are old enough to enter the adult world. Beyond that, they take care of themselves and make their own decisions about their faith.
But here at Anzar, or in other schools, we have to live under multiple rulers. This system isn’t even a fully working oligarchy. We are duel citizens!
Having parents isn’t a bad thing considering that we are still growing up, but I’m sure teenagers must wonder when it is time to start deciding what is best for themselves and not what their parents say is best.
Studies will tell you that breaking away is a primal instinct to go off and find and create your own tribe. And as much as I’d like to say that is the reason little brothers sing annoying songs at the dinner table, I think there is more to it.
Teenagers and parents disagree on a lot of points, but parents have the upper hand. Parents have the right to dictate when their children go to bed and see their friends because they are financially and emotionally responsible for them. But even so, is dictating a child’s religion all right if the parents think they are doing what is right for the child?
Children are born and raised in their faith. Parents dictate how the child believes the world works. When you’re younger, if mommy or daddy says that there is a God, you eat it right up.
That isn’t a completely bad thing.
We cannot label our own boundaries in the world as concretely on our own as religion can for us, but as that child grows into a teenager and decides they have their own thoughts on the world, some parents put down an iron fist. Some adults are all right with their children joining another faith, but I have seen some who will deny their children access to their college funds for changing their religion.
One must ask if this sort of thing is healthy, but then again, how do you raise a child with a choice? How can you tell a child to decide whether or not abortion is wrong, whether or not premarital sex is bad, or hope that they self-impose your belief that aliens do not exist upon themselves?
I asked a couple of people at my school about what they thought on the topic. Some were extremely religious, as were their parents, and others were on the completely opposite end of the scale.
One student, junior Caleb Ellison, completely agreed with his parents’ choice in religion saying, “God calls us to raise our children in the way that is right so that they will make the right choices when they are older.”
He is thankful his parents raised him in the Christian beliefs, but did admit that “as (children) get older, they will make their own choices anyway.”
I appreciated his faith, but when I asked him if his parents would accept him if he changed his religion, he replied with a stiff, “No, to tell the truth.”
Not all teenagers at Anzar agree with Ellison, though. Senior Biff Jelovich replied he didn’t think religion was necessary.
“I can’t just look at any one religion and say it’s right. I like Christmas and Easter because I was raised that way, but it’s up to you,” he said.
Jelovich didn’t know what he would do if he had his own child to teach morality to.
If things like our religion are dictated to us, that helps to form our schools’ cliques and social classes. There are those who go to Christian club every week to express their faith. Now, did their parents tell them to be Christian or did they decide it themselves? Is one type of faith greater than the other? One may never know the truth because even their own opinions of themselves and their decisions are biased.
Breaking away from one’s parents is a hard but crucial thing in child development, but how far does it go? Should students keep the religion handed to them? When do we make our own decisions? There is no bell in a child that just goes, “Ding-ding! I’m an adult now!”
Maybe the world would be easier if there was. This is why being a human is difficult. We are born with a choice.
Sarah Al-Ahmed is a junior at Anzar High School.
