Rites of passage

Rites of passage

Rites of passage and teaching are similar, because both serves the same purpose and that is to prepare the individual for the next stage in their life. Rites of passage are a way of passing along cultural, ideologies and traditions along to the upcoming generations. Most non-literate cultures often pass on their knowledge and traditions along to their offspring by allowing that child to follow and imitate their parents and elders, this process is called shaping, that child is being molded into their parents without having to read and learn about their culture. Mostly the elder in the tribe would tell stories and these stories would explain traditions to the youngster, these stories are stories that are passed down from generation to generation.
The main difference between the methods is rites of passage only teaches the person about his or her own culture and nothing else, where as learning teaches about diverse cultures and academics, such as language, culture and mathematics. Through teaching and learning cultures are able to aid in the survival of all cultures, with knowledge we are able to document and learn and experiment with different ideologies and improve on each objects, therefore ensuring the preservations and spreading of their culture. Both types of learning are very critical to societal and cultural understanding.
Rites of passage are mainly a transitioning from adolescents into adulthood. These rituals exist to teach young males and females their place in society and teach them the necessary requirements to becoming an adult. Some of these rituals are may seem barbaric to outsiders because some may include male and female circumcision other cultures may also have males fight or beat the young man to see if he is worthy and strong enough to withstand the physical pain without showing fear or pain, if this individual passes he will bring pride and status to his family but if he was to fail he will bring shame and maybe driven out of the tribe. The one aspect of these traditions is that only the strong are welcome into the society, all of these rites of passage are there to weed out the weak and frail. There was an episode of such a ritual on Discovery Channel, where a young man was being tested; his task was to run on the backs of ten cows, five times without falling down. The day of the initiation the women are also preparing as well, their preparation was the harshest; they were placed in the middle of a circle while the males of the tribe had switches or tree branch in their hands, they women danced after being served traditional beer to help them deal with the pain. The drummer started beating the drums and the women started dancing and the men started beating them until their skin were bleeding, this is to show their devotion and loyalty to their relative. If the young man would have failed it’s all would have been for nothing, fortunately the young man even after falling once, the elders allowed him to continue, once he was allowed to start over he then completed his task and was now a man, he is now able to marry and have cattle and a farm of his own.