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RECOMMENDED READING FOR UKRAINIANS OF THE BABY BOOM ERA by Kathryn A. Keene Culture and Commitment — A Study of the Generation Gap, by Margaret Mead, New Y'ork, Natural History Press, 1970. F o r young Ukrainians who desire to preserve their culture despite mixed mar riages or migrations to new countries, Culture and Commitment — A Study of the Generation Gap by Margaret Mead, is a short book worthy of careful reading. Generations of the past, present, and fu ture a re examined and Mead labels them Postfig urative, Cofigurative, and Pre- figurative, respectively. A Postfigurative Culture depends on the actual presence of three generations for the instruction and perpetuity of the culture. The Postfigurative Culture ins tructs its youth on these vital questions: Who A m I? What is the nature of my life as a member of my culture; how do I speak and move, eat and sleep, make love, make a living, become a parent, meet m y death? The protyotype post- figurative culture is the isolated primitive culture, the culture in which only the ac comodating memories of its members are there to preserve the story of the past. The possibilities of change are much greater when the group is transplanted to another environment due to circums tances such as conquests, revolutions and immigrations, when all three genera tions leave their homeland and move to gether to a place where the new landscape can be compared to the old. Mead observes that certain groups like the Jews and Armenians have been very successful in preserving their cultural identity under such circums tances. She also notes that human beings hold on more tenaciously to a cultural identity that is learned through suffering. Cultural identity that is drilled in with punishment and threats of total rejection is curiously persistent. A Cofigurative Culture is one in which the prevailing model for members of the society is the behaviour of their contem poraries. Cofiguration has its beginning in a break in the postfigurative system: catastrophe, new technology, migration, aftermath of a conquest, or adult converts. In all cofigurative cultures the elders are still dominant in the sense that they set the style and define the limits within which cofigura tion is expressed in the behaviour of the young. The young look not to their peers but to their elders for a final approval of change. Looking at their grandparents, the children see men and women whose footsteps they will never follow, but who are, by virtue of the tie through the pa rents, the people they would have be come in another setting. First native born generation of a group of immigrants must develop new styles based on their own experience and provide models for their own peers. The innovations made by the children of pioneers, those who first entered the new land or the new kind of society have the character of adaptiveness which the elders can inter pret as a continuation of their own purposive activity. Adults in a new land or neighbor hood encourage their children (because they must survive) to become part of the new order — learn new language, new habits, new manners, which from the parents’ viewpoint may have the ap pearance of a new set of values. This new set of values could slowly erode the family culture. These new values create the Two World experience Ukrainian- Americans understand so well. In its simplest form a cofigurative society is one in which there are no grandparents present. Mead notes that cultures may be distinguished not only in terms of the relative importance of the roles played by grandparents and other kin, but also in terms of the continuity, or lack of continuity, in form of what is passed on from grandparents to parent to grandchild. In the last chapter, Prefiguration and Unknown Children, Mead places the hopes and dreams of mankind on un born children, the children we hope will be born despite the threat of nuclear war which will leave no survivors. Mead sug gests that we approach this new genera tion NOT with Cofiguration BUT apply the pioneer model of first generation pioneer immigrants into an unexplored and uninhabited land — Time. According to Mead, modern techno logy, the decay of capitalism, and the collapse of the family has led to the ge neration gap crisis. She includes sociol ogist Max Lerner’s observation that every adolescent must pass through two crucial periods; one of identifying with a model (a parent, an older sibling, a teacher); the second of dissociating from this model, rebelling against it, and reas serting his/her own selfhood. Contributing to this world wide gap in communication between children and parents is the scientific revolution. For the first time all of humanity can be well nourished. The medical revolution has released women from the necessity of childbearing and will profoundly alter women’s future and the future rearing of children. Most important, this change has taken place almost simultaneously, within the lifetime of one generation and the impact is world wide. People who are carriers of vastly different cultural tradi tions are entering the present at the same point in time. Mead feels they are like the immigrants who came as pioneers to a new land, bearers of older cultures, lacking all knowledge of what demands the new conditions of life would make upon them. Today moral imperatives and values are difficult to teach. Parents who answer a child’s questions: “why must I go to bed, or eat my vegetables, or learn to read?” with: “Because God says so”, or “because I say so” are using post- figurative elements which will be more difficult to defend in the future. Without elders to consult, parents use cofigura tive responses to their children, What are the others doing? Yet this method contains the chance that others are moving in unsafe directions that parents do not want their children to emulate. Mead suggests that the child will form the shape of the future and that we must dis cover prefigurative ways of teaching and learning that will keep the future open. Margaret Mead’s study of culture and the generation gap offers valuable insights for Ukrainians and other ethnic immigrant groups. However, I believe a self-disciplined, educated adult, NOT a child will form the shape of the future. As Ukrainians we must strive to retain our language and traditions which make us unique among the cultures of the world. As Ukrainian-Americans we must strive to incorporate the survival skills neces sary for success in America, a success which will mean the perpetuation of the Ukrainian culture in the future. Kathryn A. Keene’s maternal grand mother emigrated from Ukraine to Penn sylvania in 1918. Kathryn’s mother be came a registered nurse, and Kathryn is an English teacher in a Ridgefield Park, NJ high school. In recent months, her interest in Ukrainian community affairs was activa ted by news of the Ukrainian Women's Conference, for which she has vo lunteered to serve as liaison in her area. Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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