User:SophiaOtto9

Working on a semester long project that involves working on a Wikipedia page in a Global Youth Studies class (Wiki Ed/Drake University/Global Youth Studies (Fall 2015).

For my research Wikipedia project, I am planning on creating an article about Youth in Saudi Arabia. When looking at other Wikipedia pages that could contribute to my article, I started my search with Youth in the Arab world. I did not find any information specifically about Saudi Arabia. While it was interesting to read some of the overall trends in the Arab World, I did not feel like the article gave me information that would help me in creating my page. What I did find helpful was the Saudi Arabia page because it gave me some information about the youth in the country under the subtitle youth alienation. I also found some general information about how many youth are in the country from the Demographics of Saudi Arabia page.

While reading the piece given to us in class about Arab Adolescents by Marilyn Booth, I really liked how she broke up her paper with the subtitles of Family Relationships, Education and Employment, Health and Political Engagement. I would like to have a separate section on religion and how it affects youth because religion is a big part of the culture of Saudi Arabia as well as religion has had a lot of influence over the lives of the citizens in that country. However, I know that I will be referencing religion in each of my other sections as well because religion is an influence in almost all of my other proposed sections. There is a lot of information that can be found on the education in Saudi Arabia on the Education in Saudi Arabia page. I am not sure what else I could input into my own education section of youth in Saudi Arabia that is not already said in that Wikipedia page. However, I did find some more updated data on the World Bank Organization Website about how many people are enrolled in primary education. Something that I may explain further in my education portion of my article would be how school is still segregated among women and men. I think that what I might also do is focus on some of the limits of education in the country as well as how it has impacted the youth. I recently read an article in the International Business Times that talks about some of these limitations, especially in terms of employment.

In terms of how religion, politics and family play roles in Saudi youth's lives, I found general overviews are on the Saudi Arabia page as well as the Religion in Saudi Arabia page and Culture of Saudi Arabia page. I think that what I will focus most on in my religion section is how youth view Islam now as well as how it still plays a role in their lives. For the politics section, I would like to investigate why or if there is opposition to the government as well as youth political participation, specifically involving the media. For the family section of my article, I would like to focus on how important family is in Saudi Arabia, patriarchal hierarchy as well as how this dynamic might have changed. Some of the family relations information can be found using the article that was assigned to us in class by Marilyn Booth. Health did not seem to covered too well in these pages, but I have found a lot of scholarly sources through the Cowels Library website that will help me develop this section. There seems to be a lot of information on obesity trends as well as the prevalence of tobacco use among teens, so I think that will be a lot of my health page.

In terms of my lead paragraph, I will start with saying how much of the Saudi Arabian population is youth. I will also probably mention that since religion is a large aspect of this society, that it has a lot of influence in the areas of education, politics, and family relations. Then I will go on to say that youth in Saudi Arabia face challenges, such as high unemployment rates, but are able to be more involved globally because of media and technological advancements.

Sources:

I thought that this source gave some really great insight as to what education looks like in Saudi Arabia as well as how a teen's life from rural Saudi Arabia might look different than a teen from urban Saudi Arabia.

Even though this is a short article, I still found it insightful because it talked about how there may be a shift from Saudi Arabia's ultraconservative Wahhabism ways to a less conservative form of Islam. This is because more youth are becoming educated as well as they are being exposed to social media and other non-Saudi cultures.

I thought the chapter that was assigned to us for reading about Arab adolescents was very insightful into some of the traditional aspects of Saudi Arabia as well as some of the characteristics of youth in regards to family life and employment.

What I liked about this website/fact sheet was that it gave me some information on education, for example literacy rates, and political activity, for example how many Saudi youth want to be involved in government and the decision making processes.

This journal article has more to do with some of the health aspects of Saudi youth. One thing that stood out to me when I was researching health among Saudi youth was the prevalence of articles about youth and smoking. Therefore, this article, although written in 2011, gives a good overview of smoking among Saudi youth (16-18) in Riyadh.

Even though this news article is about women of all ages and not just about youth, I thought it was important to my youth studies project because it talks about how women will have the right to vote.

I chose this news article because I thought that it gave some insightful facts into the youth unemployment rate as well as some of the reasons for why unemployment might be so high. There was also some criticisms about the education system that I will investigate into further. 3 New Sources:

This source told me about the obesity prevalence among Saudi students

This source gave me more insights into how religion affects youth as well as the problems/issues that youth face in terms of education and employment.

This source game me a clear definition of what the official religion is of Saudi Arabia