Schooling Ritual Among the Nacirema

Horace Miner’s story, Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, ridicules American’s health routines and how insane it can seem to others. At first I didn’t understand the story, I felt as though it was a crazy, magical, tale on some old group of people with an absolutely wild routine. 

Everything about it seemed so far-fetched and absurd until I realized that it was mocking our, my, own rituals I follow everyday. It made me sit back and think about what other rituals I fall accustomed to without any questions asked.

Being a student in our society is another quite absurd task that we’re asked to follow everyday of our lives. We wake up before the sun itself, are expected to present ourselves in an acceptable manner running on no sleep, go to a large building for seven hours, go home, do hours of homework, go to practice or find any time at all to relax, go to sleep way too late, and repeat the process five days a week. 

School is something that is just in our daily tasks and has been since we were three or four years old. We graduate from a small school only to go to a bigger one, four or five times in our lifetime until eventually what? What’s the purpose of all the early mornings, long days and sleepless nights? To go on to do it for the rest of our lives?

In our society, we really don’t have much of a choice, going to school or not. One is the basic norm and the other is heavily frowned upon, so we go five days a week for however long and, like our health ritual, is another thing we follow mindlessly.