What’s going on in the Gulf of Mexico is sickening. The dead sea life, the challenge to fishermen’s livelihoods, the damaged corals. The oil is so far down in the water, too, that the ole’ “oil floats” rule learned in elementary school science classes is no longer true. The disaster has reached drastic proportions; yet we still sit on the sideline, listening to BP and other companies play the “I’m not Responsible Game” with each other, and the federal government.
I’m not responsible. We’re not responsible.
Is that what we teach our children? A blame game?
That’s what happens when we approach school and learning as a zero-sum game – as an either-or proposition, for example. Who is to blame for your child not reading? “It’s in his brain,” one parent might answer. “It’s because he’s lazy,” a teacher might whisper. “It’s the boring books,” a kid might insist. The problem is….it could be a combination of all three factors, in addition to many more.
In my work with low-income high school students transitioning to college, I identified a lot of “blaming” being thrown around in conversations and in the press. “It’s the teachers’ fault,” one of my smart students said. “The kid has to learn to ‘buck up’ and deal,” a teacher said. Different conversational spaces allowed for and even praised different types of talk about who is to blame (or applaud) for a student’s success or failure.
Herein lies just one more reason to teach our children to take responsibility – but to take responsibility for the right reasons….no matter what the people around you are saying. At the Martial Arts Academy, we often say that one’s “character” is based on what that person does when no one else is watching. The same can be said about responsibility.
