Rites of Passage -- Scholastic

Rites of passage -- Scholastic Transitional Periods

The transition from one phase of schooling can be traumatic, thus kindergarten and freshman orientations and other ice breaking activities at such forums function at the onset as rites of passage, creating liminal places where young people can feel temporarily shorn of their identities and future responsibilities. The child or adolescent experiences a set of mixed emotions during rites of separation and transition. Then, the student is ultimately incorporated into a larger community of individuals. This incorporation is particularly crucial given that adolescence is often a period of intense stress and introspection and, according to the anthropologist Margaret Mead; adolescence was a particularly rocky time in the lifespan of an American teen in particular.

However, the transition from high school to college is not always the most traumatic in all views of social theorists -- according to Sigmund Freud, the period before latency in childhood was the most traumatic for a young man, as this was an age whereby the individual would find him or herself ripped away from the comfortable, solipsistic conviction that he or she was his or her mother's nearest and dearest treasure and realize that the young boy was in competition, like Oedipus, for the love of a father, and also in competition for survival with a larger social world. For Freud, separation and redefinition if the self was what is most traumatic about any developmental stage.

But regardless of such harrowing developmental constructions of trauma as the key to human social development, anthropologists such as Mary Douglass have also offered more comforting readings of the growing up process, namely that certain rites of passage exist for adolescents that offer them the ability to positively deal with such conflicts in a constructive fashion. The entirety of college, Douglass' analysis might suggest, is a liminal experience, a period where adolescents can experiment with their identity and experience a sense of physical and psychological independence from their parents and homes, without entirely and abruptly feeling wrested away from such confines.

Like every scholastic transition from grade school, to high school, to college, there are rites of separation that both reaffirm and redefine one's school self from one's home self, but without completely cutting the ties to home. The first such rite is the rite of receiving one's schedule for the semester. This affirms that what one does will be different, in terms of governing one's time, than how one governs one's time at home. Yet it also reminds the child, adolescent, or prospective college student that each day at school will end, and has a fixed duration -- home is always thus tangible and within one's grasp, even while one is governed by different biorhythms of the exterior environment.

Some sort of orientation process also usually facilitates the transitional separation from home to different schools, whether it is freshman orientation week in college, or the process of nursery school or kindergarten for a young child. Such periods often involve long stretches of intense play. The play harkens back to the games of very young childhood. The games take place in the educational environment, where one's prowess as a student will be tested so there is always an atmosphere of lurking tension in the air. Moreover, because one is interacting with one's fellow students, there is a sense that one's future social skills and mettle is being tested as well, and one must reveal facts about one's self and future goals in conversation. But rather than immediately thrusting someone into classes and a hectic work and extracurricular schedule, freshman, high school and college age, as well as young children are encouraged to go to parties, play at noncompetitive games, and reveal facts about themselves in ice-breaking games and forums, so that the immediate associations of a potentially tension-packed environment are not as stressful as they might be otherwise.

Some might argue that the separation rite of passage begins not at orientation, but when parents help students unpack their suitcases, and hover nervously while the student half hopes that they will leave, and half hopes they will stay. Such mixed disdain and longing for comfort is characteristic of most separation and transitional rites. Incorporation into the community comes once one's mother and father leave, but also once the period of transition in the form of orientation has ended as well. Finally, everyone knows the basic names and personalities in the environment, and has an idea of whom they might wish to make friends with.