Whose responsibility is it to educate our children? Is it the parents? Is it the teachers? Is it the community members?
Well my question is why are we educating the children? What is the point of teaching
children responsibility, academics and proper attitudes? I firmly believe that we are raising
our next generation so that they can be the leaders of our country and provide
for the future. I do not have
children but I still would like a competent president, knowledgeable doctors
and businessmen and women to help me in the future. I believe that we all pay taxes to education to ensure that
society is educated to serve the needs of the country.
As a teacher, I guess you could say I’m a little
selfish. I am teaching students to
act and behave the way I want them to-respectful, but with a sense of
humor. I believe that mathematics
is important, not because everyone needs Pythagorean Theorem in their life, but
because they need the logical reasoning sense it takes to solve problems.
So my Dad says he hates the phrase “it takes a
village”. He believes it takes away
all personal responsibility of parents from raising their children. I think it should put more
responsibility on all individuals involved. If I’m apart of the raising, I need to do my part. We are each responsible for the actions
that take place in our daily lives.
Any thing that happens to us is for a reason, even things we say are
because of someone else’s fault.
We allowed them in our lives.
Anything I’m blamed for I accept….almost to a fault. If it’s not my fault, I will still try
to rectify it. Example: At the
restaurant I had an order come to the window made incorrectly. I told the kitchen that it was
wrong. They told me I rang it in
wrong. We looked at the ticket,
and it was rung in correctly. They
apologized and fixed my order. Had
I rung it in wrong I would have apologized. But here’s the thing, this generation, would have blamed the
computer for making them ring it in wrong.
I blame myself for perpetuating the cycle. I never tell the students they are
wrong. Instead I say something
encouraging like “That was a good try but let’s see if we can get a closer
answer.” I admire the teachers who
teach students responsibility and ownership. However, I blame the parents for perpetuating that
cycle.
I have a really good friend (sidenote: he is probably too
good of a friend to me, but that deserves another blog post in itself) who
teaches at some high school that I have a certain affinity for and he is one
who believes that people need to take responsibility for their own actions
(sidenote: he is good at doing this in his own life, even if I have to point it
out for him). He had a student who
avoided turning in a project worth 20% of their grade. Avoided the teacher for one week, then
they blamed the teacher for not being where they said they would be (in his
classroom). When he finally got
it, the student emailed it to him…was his email not where it said it would be
for a week? The student should have taken responsibility and said that they had
not finished the assignment and needed more time, but no, instead, they blamed
my friend for not doing his part.
Well my friend took points off of the final grade for it being late. Then he thought part of it was “too
good”. He googled it…and there was
the student’s project! So he did
not give the student credit for that part. This caused the C student to fail the class (sidenote: he’s
a hardass).
Of course he had to call home to the parent. As a parent, if my student had turned
in a project a week late, and plagiarized, I would have felt like a failure for
not have hounding her for her assignment and for not teaching her that printing
things off the internet is wrong. But
what was the parent’s reaction?
“Why did my child fail, when other students cheated too?” They had to have a meeting regarding
the grade and about how this student didn’t do anything wrong…………(sidenote: my
friend was pissed).
Honestly, what has society become? I believe that it takes a village. The student needs the
parents to raise them to be ethical individuals. The student needs their peers and mentors to advocate for
completing school-work. The
student needs teachers to teach them what ethical practices are for completing
work. No matter what, the student,
nor society need cop-outs and excuses.
Excuses are tools of incompetence (sidenote: my friend is a hard ass
like Mr. Burke).
So in the end, what did this student learn? Was she properly educated and/or
raised? Well if the teacher flunked
her, she was taught that average work for a year, and bailing in the end, gets
you nowhere. If she passes, she
was taught that average work and messing up can be forgiven. What if she had been an excellent
student all year? She could have
not turned in the exam and passed.
What lesson does that teach?
What if she had been a horrible student all year and passed the exam
with flying colors to pass with a D?
D stands for Diploma. Which
would you rather teach, parent or be friends with?
We all have to be responsible for our actions, but who
taught us that? Surely, it was not
just your parents. I hope that you
see it all around you, modeled by graciousness, strong characters and
responsible actions.
Back to the question, “what did the student learn?” If she walks away from this experience
and realizes that she disappointed people, then this was a good problem. Everyone messes up. We all have low points in our lives and
if not for forgiveness we would all be miserable people. But what if she hasn’t learned? What if
she does the same thing again?
What if she has the same teacher next year and is a problem child
because she resents him? Where do
we learn forgiveness?
We learn it from having others forgive us. By the actions we are shown. So remember to be an example for
everyone. Be gracious, be
generous, be responsible. If
people put their prides aside and thanked their neighbor for something small,
helped a stranger with simple task and held themselves accountable for their
own actions the world would be a much better place. By the way, it’s not too late to start doing these things,
or forgive or apologize. Our actions today may influence who we are tomorrow
but they do not define who we are…at least I’m hoping I was a better person
today, than I was yesterday, and I strive to be a better person tomorrow, than
I was today.
