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And for the record, my son doesn't only march to his own drummer, but he has an entire band the rest of us cannot hear. However, he is still loved, accepted, and treasured for who he is, even in the viciousness of high school. His teachers adore him, his friends, coaches, classmates and teammates appreciate him for his crazy self and I have no doubt he will find his place in this world, and be leagues happier than most of the rest of us are, simply because those filters the rest of us have to worry about what society thinks, are absent for him. He knows they exist, and he learns to operate within them, but he will never understand them without having them explained to him, and mostly, he is actually better off for it. It does, however, make me thankful that you were never his principal.
First, you can't seem to make up your mind. What you have explained here makes it sound like, despite his learning problems, he is fitting into society to a reasonable extent.
Second, you're glad I wasn't his principal. That's cool. I would have welcomed your son or daughter into my school anyways. The kids we had in the various special ed realms were great. Even the one that ran down the hall nude on occasion. Even the one who would...in the middle of some group activity...yell "booger alert" if people didn't give him his space. Even the one who would start to masturbate in public on occasion.
I can only wonder what the posts would be like in a similar thread where the subject was a similarly aged boy who was put in a full-time program to become a Catholic priest.
Why would they be any different?
Because sometimes we Buddhists (like all groups of people) tend to stick up for "our own".
Kids at Western boarding schools go home on holidays, or at least for summer break. Sometimes parents visit. And they allow the students plenty of leisure time. The sense of isolation from family, even abandonment, that children in the monastic system feel can be traumatic. Monasteries can't be reduced to mere "magnet schools". The description of the rigid routine in the articles makes that clear. The institute where the boy is studying now might better fit those descriptions.
I think one problem is that the West doesn't tend to have a realistic picture of life--or the variations of life--in a monastery. The vast majority of boys and girls in monasteries and nunneries in Tibet, for example, are living in or near their own community, in education institutions which their own family has attended for centuries, and very often with members of their own family. Certainly the Vietnamese boy is not one of these, but he is an exception, and could be compared to on of the many American kids stuck in a Swiss boarding schools who miss a Christmas or two.
Monasteries aren't gulags; there's nothing inherently oppressive about a regular schedule, and in fact many humans thrive on a regular schedule. Different monasteries have different environments, but it's not true that monasteries as a whole allow for no leisure time. Young boys in Tibetan monasteries have time to play, and not all of their study day is spent in prayers or rigid ceremony - there are art classes, cooking, traveling into the community with the teachers to learn to administer to the people, journeys cross country to other monasteries and great teachers--sometimes really long journeys, camping along the way, seeing the outdoor wild in a way that many city boys never experience. I've heard many a Tibetan monk reminisce fondly about his experiences growing up in monastic life; Ani Choying Drolma, for example, has very warm feelings about her time in the nunnery where she was given a fantastic music education, and could escape her abusive home situation.
To be certain, by the time a student is 14 or 15 they are expected to be quite serious about their studies. Our feeling that this is somehow oppressive is more a reflection of how we in the West have come to view even 18, 19 and 20 year olds as still children, imo.
Without question some students get lonely, and one coming from city life can certainly be expected to find country life, a change of culture, a change of diet, challenging, maybe even depressing. That's hardly unexpected, and hardly an indictment against rural institutions as a whole.
As with any issue, I think it's best discussed on a case by case basis, since that's where people's real needs lie. This boy was happier at the second institution; certainly there are other boys who found the first institution acceptable. It's okay to have different needs, and it doesn't mean that just because one person has a strong preference to leave a school that there's anything wrong with the school.
@vinlyn, as I said, I apologized for my statement. It wasn't fair to make being that I don't know you at all. As for my son, the difference to me is, he is not working to conform to fit into society. The society (in this case thus far our community/school) is conforming to fit him, to accommodate his needs and his quirks. He is still very much not a typical person. All the things we take for granted that we pick up on the fly like facial expressions, social cues, understanding sarcasm and knowing how to respond, even figuring out how to wake up in time to not be late for school, he cannot do. He can pick up a quantum physics book and read it the way I read Harry Potter books. But he cannot understand why it's a big deal if he's late for school or work, or why you have to follow rules that you don't agree with. So while he's been blessed with amazing people around him, he still does not fit into what society requires of the average person. He just takes it in stride and is himself no matter what. He doesn't conform. He expects the world to deliver what he needs to accomplish his goals, and that is exactly what happens for him.
The Dalai Lama's oldest brother was living in the general vicinity of his home community when he went to the monastery as a tulku. His parents kept him home until age 9, which is late for a tulku. Still, he was terribly homesick all the time. His father visited as often as he could, and occasionally both parents would visit, and on rarer occasions, the whole family would visit. He was far enough away that the visits weren't frequent. He never adjusted to being away from the family, even in his mid-teens, even though a younger brother had joined him, as another tulku. When the family moved to Lhasa, he blew off his monastic gig, against the protests of the abbot and other high lamas, and moved to Lhasa to be with his family. He just couldn't handle being without them. He continued his monastic studies in Lhasa. This type of homesickness and longing for family is common.
Totally agree, @Dakini - the monastic life is not for everyone, and even regular school can be too much. I cried nearly every day for some reason at school, homesick on a daily basis well into 5th grade, and I wasn't even in boarding school.
If a boy decides on his own that he wants to be a monk, tries it out, and likes it, that's one thing. But people dance around the fact that in a lot of cases, the boy is forced to enter a lifelong role of celebacy and strictly controlled behavior and his own needs and wants are ignored. And why? Does the world need one more monk? Aren't there enough Tulkus wandering around already?
It is not natural to deny a boy or girl even the chance of romance, of the first stumbling discovery of what sex is all about, or what it means to face choices in life. Monks don't get to chose anything. Monks aren't supposed to even have an orgasm, although I can guarantee that rule is regularly broken. So forcing boys to be monks winds up degrading the sangha. You end up with monks who didn't choose that life and have no real commiittment to the Dharma. You can't manufacture Buddhas like that.
I don't really have a problem with a 13 year old being celibate. It's sort of moot until he's older (well, he's 16 now - and I still don't have a problem with it). It's not as if kids that age in all boarding schools aren't encouraged to be celibate, and most boarding schools are single-sex, romance-denying institutions, lol.
We're very swift to condemn someone else's longstanding cultural traditions, completely ignoring the historical reality that when cultural traditions are torn down by outsiders, generally the result to the society is damaging social upheaval, alcoholism, prostitution--all of which have happened in Tibet as the result of China's 60 year rampage against Tibetan culture. When culture evolves on its own, that's one thing; but outsiders tearing it down is generally harmful.
Monastery education isn't any weirder or more unseemly than cramming 30 kids per classroom into eight 43 minute lessons per day, every day, in American public schools, with a rushed, 21 minute "lunch" consisting of pure garbage.
Comments
Second, you're glad I wasn't his principal. That's cool. I would have welcomed your son or daughter into my school anyways. The kids we had in the various special ed realms were great. Even the one that ran down the hall nude on occasion. Even the one who would...in the middle of some group activity...yell "booger alert" if people didn't give him his space. Even the one who would start to masturbate in public on occasion.
Monasteries aren't gulags; there's nothing inherently oppressive about a regular schedule, and in fact many humans thrive on a regular schedule. Different monasteries have different environments, but it's not true that monasteries as a whole allow for no leisure time. Young boys in Tibetan monasteries have time to play, and not all of their study day is spent in prayers or rigid ceremony - there are art classes, cooking, traveling into the community with the teachers to learn to administer to the people, journeys cross country to other monasteries and great teachers--sometimes really long journeys, camping along the way, seeing the outdoor wild in a way that many city boys never experience. I've heard many a Tibetan monk reminisce fondly about his experiences growing up in monastic life; Ani Choying Drolma, for example, has very warm feelings about her time in the nunnery where she was given a fantastic music education, and could escape her abusive home situation.
To be certain, by the time a student is 14 or 15 they are expected to be quite serious about their studies. Our feeling that this is somehow oppressive is more a reflection of how we in the West have come to view even 18, 19 and 20 year olds as still children, imo.
Without question some students get lonely, and one coming from city life can certainly be expected to find country life, a change of culture, a change of diet, challenging, maybe even depressing. That's hardly unexpected, and hardly an indictment against rural institutions as a whole.
As with any issue, I think it's best discussed on a case by case basis, since that's where people's real needs lie. This boy was happier at the second institution; certainly there are other boys who found the first institution acceptable. It's okay to have different needs, and it doesn't mean that just because one person has a strong preference to leave a school that there's anything wrong with the school.
It is not natural to deny a boy or girl even the chance of romance, of the first stumbling discovery of what sex is all about, or what it means to face choices in life. Monks don't get to chose anything. Monks aren't supposed to even have an orgasm, although I can guarantee that rule is regularly broken. So forcing boys to be monks winds up degrading the sangha. You end up with monks who didn't choose that life and have no real commiittment to the Dharma. You can't manufacture Buddhas like that.
We're very swift to condemn someone else's longstanding cultural traditions, completely ignoring the historical reality that when cultural traditions are torn down by outsiders, generally the result to the society is damaging social upheaval, alcoholism, prostitution--all of which have happened in Tibet as the result of China's 60 year rampage against Tibetan culture. When culture evolves on its own, that's one thing; but outsiders tearing it down is generally harmful.
Monastery education isn't any weirder or more unseemly than cramming 30 kids per classroom into eight 43 minute lessons per day, every day, in American public schools, with a rushed, 21 minute "lunch" consisting of pure garbage.
Homeschooling, baby, lol, I'm an advocate.