Raffi Dekermenjian is one of few students who is gifted in one subject but very weak in the others. He is 15 yrs. old and in the 6th class. He has a father who is physically retarded, and has a mother who is almost mentally retarded. He is a brother of two younger brothers and sister. He has a quiet, lonely, peaceful personality. This year Raffi will leave the school because of his age and his conditional limited mental ability. There is no evidence of organic brain damage in Raffi, yet his mental deficit results probably from growing up in below-average intellectual environment.
Raffi has been a boarding student since 1998. He repeated the 5th class and the school allowed him to pass to be in the 6th grade class. This academic year was the last chance for him to stay, but he failed; his insufficient results let the school put him out.
Raffi is one of the several students who are going to leave the school for the same reason. He is also one of the several students who are creative in one subject but very weak in the others. What we are sure about these students is that they are going to leave the school, but to where? This we don’t know! There is no place can Raffi go and continue his education but the street.
Personally, I would call Raffi a gifted student. He was able to help many of his classmates in Math. He finds pleasure in solving mathematical problems than having anything else. As many students, as many minds; every one his own way. We will not ever fully understand the creative process in our scales of such students. Why was Thomas Edison able to invent so many things? Was he simply more intelligent than most people? Did he spend more hours toiling away in private? Surprisingly, when Edison was a young boy, his teacher told him he was too dumb to lean any thing. Other creative famous people whose creative genius went unnoticed when they were young include Walt Disney, who was fired from a news paper job because he did not have any good ideas; Enrico Caruso, whose music teacher told him that his voice was terrible; Winston Churchill, who failed the 1st year of secondary school.
Disney, Edison, Caruso, Churchill, and may be Raffi were for a certain time cast away, but all of them understood their life is what their thoughts make it.
Nabil Maamarbashi
Anjar, June 2001
Is there anyone who likes his/her own culture?
Two boys from the big boys’ building didn’t have their hair cut “properly” for more than two months. Their hair was quite long, especially from the front; such a style was not accepted by the school. After many tries, they agreed to go to the hair dresser and cut their hair properly, but they came back with a little arrangement of it: they didn’t cut it the way that school would agree for a “normal” student. It was obviously clear that they did this intentionally. We were trying to understand why! But we could not, until the Christmas party took place. They combed their hair and raised it up like pyramids (respectively) and fixed it by the mousse hairstyle. Now we know why! From the beginning they were thinking of this party, and thinking to have a special “modern” hairstyle (short back and side, too long in the front) to which a school or a normal haircut cannot fit.
I asked them: “do you like your hair cut now?” they said, “not only we like it, but we would like to have it every day”, “it is a lovely style for many American star movies and singers”, they continued. “We are fed up from the old way of hair cut, and we don’t like it any more”.
The way in which these two boys acted reflects not only the question of being modern and having new hairstyle, but it reflects the whole way of daily living. The hairstyle is one example of rejecting their old way of living. They are not any more interested in the way their culture is concerned about; this rejection includes beliefs (shared explanations of experience), values (criteria of moral judgment), norms (specific guidelines for behavior), as well as dressing and eating. This makes me think of the question: Is there still anyone who likes his/her own culture? It seems youth are facing an identity problem. For them, it is a time of finding out who they are, what a person is all about, and where one is headed in life? The thoughts of youth of their culture are long, long thoughts.
Nabil Maamarbashi
TOP Anjar
What are the ways in which people today are seeking the best and fulfillment in apart from God? Is it a big home, fancy cars, becoming workaholic, TV and movies, job promotions, membership in civic organizations, drugs, physical fitness, etc.? When we think of the fulfillment in life, I believe that our society filled with people who are leading empty lives, and need to be introduced to meaningful in relationship with God.
A sense of meaninglessness is one of the most important forms of human alienation and is characteristic of any new society. Fulfillment and the meaning in life are the courage to be, and it is found in the belief that life finds fulfillment in relation to The Infinite. Thus God’s purpose and love give our children and human lives their ultimate being. So let us live in relation with God, in order our children have the example to learn what is the best fulfillment in life.
April 17, 2001
How children sometimes understand freedom.
Life started again in the Big Boys’ Building after a “long” vacation. The students were registered in the school, and they were supplied with most of what they need for a full start.
It was the study time when I noticed one of the students reading a comic book. I came near to him and said:
“Hey, no comic books until you finish your homework”.
”I did finish,” he said.
“That didn’t take very long. Did you do a good job?” I said.
“I did great job when you’re far ahead of the class as I am, it doesn’t take much time,” he said.
“ O.k, let’s check your Math homework,” I said.
“Let us not, and say we did,” he said.
“Your teacher says you need to spend more time on it. Open your Math book,” I said.
“More time?! I already spend ten whole minutes and ten minutes shot; wasted; down the drain,” he said.
“ You have written here 7+4=6. Now you know that’s not right,” I continued.
“So I was off a little bit. Sue me,” he said.
“You can’t add things and come out with less than you started with!” I said.
“I can do that! It’s a free country! I’ve got my right!” he answered.
Nabil Maamarbashi
Anjar, Lebanon
Oct.8, 2000
Paradox in the Christmas Street: Hope and Despair
It was 3am when I saw a young man in car molestation with a girl of 17years old asking her to get in the car. We were coming back from the Christmas party that took place in our relative’s home. Around that girl were many young boys and girls of the same age. It was clear that they either drug addicted or drunk. For me it was not an easy seen that I could escape, at least in my mind, and ask my self about the life of such young people. What happen for these youth that they left home or being left by their families? Or, is that the freedom that these young generation searching for? For what they are looking, or from what they are running away?
On the other side of the Christmas street, we pass by hundreds of people (in Beirut) clutching candles and crucifixes in hand and chanting blessings. They were surrounding a miniature statue of the Virgin Mary that appears to be oozing oil. They have stopped their cars on the road in order to witness the “miracle”. The 30-centimeter high statue shows traces of oil on the edges of the Virgin’s hands and on her blue garment. Since the statue started to ooze oil, city employers have guarded it. Non-believers are not allowed to enter the area where the statue is housed in a small shelter. Most of the viewers were youth and women. (The Catholic Church in Beirut refused to call the event a miracle. It is a long process of investigation to certify a miracle).
These two paradoxical views are examples of hope and despair that human beings are living in. It is better to see hope and despair as complex dialectical relation aspects than simply antonyms. When we understand the hope as a response stress and in which the person acquires a patient and confident, and when we understand the despair as an objectless that come from deep depression, we can see that both groups are quit similar. Both groups were trying to cope with their stresses in different way. One group in a worldly way, and the other group in a supernatural way. But both would probably reach closed future. Both groups were saying, “If you could see things my way, you also do the same”.
Of course, there is nothing to hope if every thing goes well. That’s what makes the future for a hoping person is open for something new, because the hoper sees the reality as a process and therefore essentially open-end. There is nothing to see more about God if you saw such a “miracle”. There is nothing to do more with yourself if you reached that stage of loss. That is faith. For faith is “to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we can not see”.
Nabil Maamarbashi
Anjar, Jan. 9, 2001
Parenthood.
It was strange how parents of old students in our boarding were eagerly waiting for the opening of school, so that they send their children to the Boarding.
This made me think of what parenthood means, especially for the first years of the children and their childhood.
Is parenthood only to have children or it is more, to raise them up and to think and worry for their life and future?
Is parenthood to give children a place to stay in and to sleep there, or it is to be with them a family and a home?
I can understand some real difficulties in family life, but I also can see the youth in our societies who are growing up without real parental care and direction. This, I believe, is a serious issue we have to face in the coming years.
“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future” says Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The good news for our small girls is that they have the Boarding home, where they feel at home, they play, eat study, and pray together and our hope is that they get some of parental love and direction there!
Sylvie Avakian Maamarbashi
Anjar, Lebanon
Oct.8, 2000