EDUCATION: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

All children find mirrors through which they define themselves. These mirrors are the attitudes and values that parents and teachers model. Since World War II life has changed drastically in our country. We have become a self-indulgent society and many of our students no longer feel the need to contribute or be self-reliant.

When I was a young person growing up on a rural dairy farm, I received an internship in life skills. There were ways to encourage self-discipline, good judgment and responsibility. It was common to start working early in life either in a family business or, as for myself, on a farm. The chance to have a great education was valued highly. In those olden days we thought of school as a wonderful alternative when comparing it to hard work. Today, our students have other alternatives, which do not foster the self-reliance we automatically accrued from our family life.

The alternatives to education today are found in rock videos, walkmans, soap operas, wandering around the mall or town, smoking a little dope, drinking a few six packs, sex, cable TV, talking on the phone, etc. These are logical choices for our students seeking an easy time and can make education seem like a curse.

As a nation we are not doing a good job of passing down the lessons from the past. The result is that we are seeing a tremendous change in attitudes, values and behaviors of our young people.

The extended families of yesterday were a nourishing environment for children. When the day's work was completed children participated in mealtime discussions, learned handicrafts, played games and often learned to read and write from each other. Today, if you surveyed a class of students you would find that their time is spent watching TV (sometimes late into the night), playing video games or talking with peers for long hours on the phone.

The family has been reduced to a nuclear unit of one or two people plus the children. Interaction within this unit amounts to only a few minutes a day.

Since 1940 with the invention of television, homelife has been introduced to many new attitudes, values and behaviors. When surveying my class, all my students indicated they watched more hours of TV during a week than they spent in the classroom. They are doing this in place of homework, reading, chores or work, exercise, playing family games, etc.

Most students report that they eat their meals while viewing television. With less time spent in dialogue with family members, children are not developing the important foundations of moral and ethical development, critical thinking and judgmental maturity. When families are not having good communication between the mature and less mature it threatens the bonds of closeness, trust, dignity and respect that hold our society together.

Today's lack of dialogue and interaction between students and parents engenders a situation where young people are incapable of informing themselves of all they need to know to become mature adults.

Even in our schools many teachers have too many students, too much to do and too little time to do it. And thus students, who need more dialogue and collaboration so that they can validate what is really important, can be given only a few minutes of individual attention and encouragement. This is discouraging.

Many of our students find it difficult to accept responsibility. Responsibility is the ability to recognize and understand limits and consequences, earned privileges, and the importance of doing what one says. Stated another way -- responsibility is cause and effect as it operates in the world.

Today we have many superparents who consistently rush in to rescue their children from inadequacies by compensating for them or by stepping in and deferring the consequences of their child's behavior. When this occurs, children lose the opportunity to learn that their behavior has consequences.

Parents find it easier to rescue their children than to empower them.

To empower children it is essential to develop respectful dialogue, a skill for listening, understanding, patience, and the ability to handle responsibility. For students today to develop good interpersonal skills they need to experience them and have examples from real people (opposed to TV people). In today's world if we want to make super students, we need to turn superparents into super models with model behaviors and attitudes. The first perceptions that young people have to themselves is fostered from the parenting environment. If our young people see "winners" they will be "winners".

We have a real need for students to come to school today prepared to take on responsibility, resolve differences, be capable of working with others, understand others and be capable of dealing effectively with their own ideas, feelings and needs.

We need our students to arrive at school prepared to listen, capable to participate in constructive dialogue, capable of good decisions and ready to take some responsibility for their education.

The family unit can be an asset to their childs' education by having more dialogue and helping to model what they want to see in their children. At the end of every day parents should ask themselves this question: How much time have I spent today in real dialogue with each of my children?

Jo Peukert is a sixth grade teacher at May Greene School and president of the Cape Girardeau Community Teachers Association