An Extraordinary Young Man

[tiltjlp]

From what I read and hear on the nightly news, I wonder about our future, given the attitude and disinterest many young people seem to have today in getting their education, and even in life in general. But if there are enough young folks like my 19-year-old neighbor Dia, just maybe we don’t have to worry quite so much. Dia and his family came to the US twelve years ago from Palestine, and I wish that more of my neighbors were like them. As a family, they are polite, quite, and friendly, and run a small business. But the one I really want to tell you about is Dia, who is a senior in high school.

First off, he’s a straight A student, and has a scholarship to study dentistry once he completes some courses at a local community college. I met him two years ago, just after the woman who ran errands for me moved. He knocked on my door to introduce himself, and ask if I needed help, since Carolyn had moved. He takes out my trash, does my laundry, and gets me a newspaper every Sunday, and charges me just enough so he’ll have some pocket money. Best of all, he visits for a while when he stops by for his chores, and I’ve found him to be a good humored but serious minded young man. We’ve discussed all sorts of topics, including the differences between our two cultures.

<OBeing a Muslim from the Middle East, he has been instilled with a strong sense of not only right and wrong, but honor and justice. He talks often about how many of his fellow students are wasting their chance for an education, and are disrespectful to their teachers, and each other. According to his viewpoint, the problem isn’t that teachers don’t do a good job, but that the students won’t even try to learn. For his senior essay, he wrote an excellent paper asking if teenagers should be held more responsible for their actions, and feels that peer pressure is what is causing many of the problems young people are involved in today. His essay was so well written, and cited professionals whose opinions had such an impact on me that I changed my thinking about if we should try any teens as adults, since they are still in the learning stages of their lives.

<OI’m proud to call Dia my friend, and wish more American teens looked at life as seriously as he does, with goals and ambition for the future, and a willingness to work and help others. While I’m sure he’ll be a success whatever he decides to do in life, lately he’s been thinking about becoming a social worker, which I think he would be great at, since he has such as open mind. Just maybe, with young adults like my friend Dia, America still has a chance. I wrote this to tell you about a remarkable young man I am fortunate to know, and would ask you not to turn this into any sort of political discussion. This isn’t at all about Dia’s ethnic or religious background, but about both what he has accomplished, and his potential.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

wonderful.

one of my favorite / humbling things is to learn about other cultures, meet the ppls, see things from their POV. such provides lots of incidental insights in to our own culture and into core human behavior and needs.

but teachers are overwhelmed these days. or, the ones who really try are, therefore they learn to try less hard or just mail it in and build up their tenure w/ aim for retirement.

when modern culture is expressly-designed to rip away authority from parents and teach kids to be super-entitled brats, then you need extra-strong, involved parents to keep the focus where it should be. most parents in US are probably too involved w/ all the cultural distractions to do more than a fair job on that, unfortunately.

 

[Itchigo]

This sounds like an exceptional individual. We need more of these and not the entitled spoiled brats we have today. Even if culture has enabled it, it's time that stopped.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

good luck with that.

 

[faralos]

When I was a scoutmaster I started with only three boys, but soon after we started to get an actual troop going.
Then I got two Indian kids one a muslim and we had the greatest Senior patrol leader come from that one shy kid.
I put him into that position to help him overcome his shyness.
Let me tell ya' after a year he went apeshit and got the troop up to par
with patrol flags, yells, a better showing for our meetings and an overall better outlook
that the rest of the boys had on the troop in general and life in particular.
And his family all were the nicest people one could ever hope to meet,
yes all 17 of them! He showed up American kids by being a gentleman
and a real scholar. He was our pride and joy going from 'the shy foreign kid'
to the SPL (senior Patrol Leader) which is a position usually voted upon by the other kids.
He paved the way to us having more foreign kids wanting to join the troop
from all over too not just in our city which is where most troops get their prospects from.
Oh btw he is now a Dentist having gone on to college after a talk from me and his school counselor.
In our country even the 'foreign' kids can succeed given the chance
guess what I am trying to say is it takes all kinds and colors to make this
a great country and God Bless America for giving that chance
out to anyone willing to grab at it

 

[tiltjlp]

Thanks for your comments guys. I think families from other countries and cultures are griven by personal pride to suceed, which maybe has been lost to folks born here. In my apartment building, we have four Muslin families, one fellow from Africa, a 60 year old black resident caretaker, and several white folks. Our building just recently was converted to a locked building. The only tenants who prop the door open and trash the hallways are the white folks. I suggested to our landlord, who is a Muslin, that me and the caretaker should be the only Americans he rents to. If my building is an indication of what's wrong with our society, the book The Ugly American needs to be rewritten and updated.

 

[sleepy]

I fear the so-called cultural influence to reject personal responsibility and accomplishment and simply become a successful git is but a tool of the industrial complex.
Some folks in power simply cannot compete with those of imagination, drive and ability, so they choose to distract us from ourselves in order to stay on top.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

i mean, right around the corner from you sleepy you have the world's #1 movie industry cranking out movies in which insensitive assholes are the protagonists of choice.

we live in the absolute peak age in human history of luxuries, tech progress, resources for all citizens, yet we're culturally trained to take all of it for granted as some kind of atlantean birthright. only it's never enough, there's always stuff to complain about, and we're encouraged to have a badass-snotty attitude about the whole situation.

and it goes on and on and ppl realise it less and less. the whole thing became the new normal... somewhere after WWII i think. but deep down most americans are just as miserable as any unfortunate ppls anywhere in history (you consistently see it in their decision-making if nowhere else), but they don't have a clue what it's about, how to explain it, what to do about the problem, etc.

why most americans are hamsters running on their hamster wheels. when their wheel slows down, they don't have the tools to deal with it. they get depressed, anxious, unstable. the only way most ppl know is to do whatever it takes to get the wheel rolling again.

 

[sleepy]

The movie industry is very keen on Subjective Entertainment,
but hedges their bets by investing heavily in The Internet.
The industry itself is remarkably a cottage industry among only a few people, this in spite of appearances to the contrary.

My schooling was all about giving me just enough information to be a usable employee, and not enough information to allow me my self-reliance.

After WW II? No, if you had been around in the late 1950's-early 60's there was Walter Cronkite and others who actually shared news of the setbacks and advances in the development of the microchip, the computer, and other noteworthy developments, however, the industrial complex all the while was depending on their closed-door policies in order to avoid opportunities to the people with answers who paid attention. Much of the response was instead laundered through nameless public corporate R&D to the elimination of the actual contributors from the final results.

And especially now, you cannot approach a Public corporation with an idea, no matter how great it may be. They shroud themselves in false claims of "Intellectual Property", even as they haven't a clue about the invention. They won't even look at the suggestion, "to avoid legal conflict". And then there are those who will say that, but then pick the invention apart piece by piece and patent each part for themselves.

This behavior conspires to discourage anyone from bothering with their "crazy dreams", even the good ones.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

i was trying to keep it on track w/ john's point, actually.
the mechanics of the ugly american, so forth.