Our Gathering Discussions
Gathering report:(by a father)
I was asked to write the minutes of the meeting , which I relectantly
accepted because I was given no choice : -)
Like always the first thing that got talked about was where and
when the next gathering would take place. A theme was proposed
and the february was declared as getting ready for eid nourooze
month and we thought it would be fun if we can have a egg coloring
activity for kids because it coincides with easter. The
event still needs to be planned and volunteers are sought.
I cant remeber who volunteered.....
Along with that it was easy to guess that the march gathering
should have nourooze as a theme. Two activties were suggested.
The first one "jashn" or a party at a some kid friendly place, with food
music and dancing. But this can only happen if enough people
sign up early on for this to meet the minimum requirement for
getting a place. A pedar has already sent out the email describing that.
The second theme was to revive "eid-deedanee" concept. The condition was
to have at your home a "sufray haft-seen" and then others would go and visit
each others. This is probably only practical with folks who live close
to each other but since one can only visit so many places in a day.
The idea is to introduce kids to the ritual of visiting over eid.
Soheila also reminded that if people have snap shots of their kids
with sufray haftseen or other cultural conotations, she would
like to get them to put on the web site.
After all these exciting activity suggestions folks started talking
about more serious stuff.
The first topic under discussion was selection of schools for kids
at kindergarten or lower grades between public and private. Also among private
schools which system is more appropriate.
The systems were broadly categerized into free form instruction, where
the sense of education is much broader in scope, lack of grades or
competitive and the more structured competitive, academic and discipline
oriented , which most of reminicscend?? is what they grew up with.
There were as many opinions as there were people , but it seems that
if one has a choice , its best to match the personality of the child
with type of school system.
Folks are invited to express their experiences or opinions regarding this.
The next topic that emerged next was something that was not really on agenda
but it turns out almost everybody had something to say. It started out as
a comment about childern's training , education and overall responsibilty
being mostly with mother and typically father's low key role. That is
regardless of whether mothers have a day-time job they still end up
doing the "woman's" duties.
It rapidly evolved into a fairly contested discussion and covered everything
under the sun, including house chores and role men are
suppose to play in the "terbiat" or training of childern. This discussion
was clearly divided along the gender lines and its hard to say if any real
conclusion was drawn at the end. Its even more difficult to summarize in words
the different angles and shades this talk took. All I can say is that
you had to be there to get the jist of the discussion.
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madar-pedar@surya.eecs.berkeley.edu.
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