Recently, some schools in the Jewish community of Five Towns has announced that, from now on, boys and girls will have separate winter vacations. The reason they give is because some teenagers went on vacation to Florida and did something "inappropriate." (This, however, can also be defined as "talking in public," but people have this knack for blowing these things out of proportion.) So, aside from the stupidity that these schools have vacation the during the last week or so of January, and do not give New Year's--a perfectly secular holiday--off. Here are some other things wrong that I find wrong with it:
- First of all, from now on, there cannot be family vacations, since the boys will have off one week, and the girls, another. Whatever happened to Florida now?
- Second of all, when you tell someone that they cannot have something, then they only want it more. For example: if a little kid wants an iPod really badly, and the parents tell him/her that he/she can have only when he/she is older, then that child will only want that iPod even more, to the point of total obsession. Just limiting teenage boys and girls from interacting will only make them want it more, and will do more behind their parents' backs. (Another perfect example is the Prohibition, which was repealed because it only caused people to import alcohol illegally.) If parents keep on neglecting to tell their children (at a respectable age, of course) about sex, etc., and just ignoring the topic, then they are sending out the message that they do not care about it.
- Third of all, there is always one boy and one girl who have to go upstate to "visit" their Aunt Shpilky because "the city life is not for me."
- Fourth, you have both teenage boys and girls who go upstate in the summer to "help" poor mother with their children. At night, however, they are free to roam around and do all of the inappropriate stuff they can find, which includes, yes, sex. If you're going to limit everyone during the school year, then at least be complete and enforce the same thing during the summer as well!
- Fifth, it is the parents' job to make sure that their children do the right thing, not the schools'. If it comes to the schools enforcing this, then the parents are obviously not doing their jobs.
- Sixth, this whole case could easily have been blown out of proportion, from, say, talking in public (which I mentioned earlier). If this is the case, then the parents, who see nothing wrong with this, should not be sending their children to a school where this is so strictly looked down upon. A school--especially a religiously-affiliated school--should reflect the parents' views and the views that they want their children to be exposed to. If the parents' and the schools' views differ, then their children should not be attending that school!
Thank you for letting me rant. As always, your comments are appreciated!
P.S. I'm sorry about not being able to update
Eppis Fun Gornisht. Between finals and everything, it's been pretty hard. However, you can always follow me on
Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/iamamiaim . Since I'm so limited there, I usually talk about random things that are too short to merit a blog entry. Again, sorry! I am going to try to update it more frequently!
