You Can't Handle the Truth

BartmasBlurb#33

“You want the truth; you can’t handle the Truth!”

Freedom equals Responsibility

We are surrounded daily with whether or not we are going to take personal responsibility for ourselves. Throughout our early childhood and into adolescence we struggle with individuality and independence. One of the reasons I loved teaching sixth grade was the opportunity to mold young minds into self-guided missiles of learning and responsibility. Seeing young people make the decision to become positive leaders is one of the most rewarding experiences any adult can experience!

How do you teach a young person that with freedom comes great responsibility? You must give them incremental levels of responsibility! With the advent of technology we are asking students to take on immense responsibility with the care of and use of digital devices to become good digital citizens. How can we expect them to be responsible if we are not teaching them? One of the observations I have made in being involved with education is how our teaching of discipline changes from the lower elementary levels up through the intermediate grades. In fourth grade many teachers slowly get away from teaching students expectations and responsibilities. For some it is, “just,” expected that their classes behave. We must continue to teach the risk and reward associated with students taking on greater responsibility.  Just as we differentiate our subject areas, we must also teach discipline in differentiated instruction. Many of the students that we see today have little or no self-discipline being taught to them in the home. Many students truly do not even understand what freedom means. Freedom without self-discipline is anarchy. As we teach even older children the concepts of freedom we must interweave the concept of responsibility into the mix-there is a equal ratio of responsibility that must be present. When Russia slowly became more democratic in its form of government the adults in that vast country struggled with the whole concept of freedom.

In the lower elementary we give students responsibility by giving them tasks to perform in the class or for the class; anything from being the student that plugs in the chargers to the child who runs notes to the office. These are tasks that use freedom to teach responsibility. We use these to teach them the importance they have to the society of the class and school by doing jobs well. We teach positive regard for others. The majority of discipline issues I deal with in the day correspond with people saying negative things to others, or treating people in negative ways. It takes A LOT of self-discipline to tame your tongue. Look at the ancient wisdom about how dangerous the mouth is; “Loose lips sink ships,” “Sharper than a two sided sword.”

We must show students that the freedom of speech does not give us the right to just be mean to each other. It is not wrong to disagree, but we must teach opposition of viewpoints with respect. In the area of physical respect many students just simply cannot handle being close to another child…they can’t keep their hands to themselves. Most physical contact starts with either retaliating to words spoken or wanting attention. Some students just express themselves physically by bumping into each other or punching someone ion the arm. Boys do not hug a lot…they hit! We need to continually coach students on how to use their freedom with responsibility. In the secondary level we can use literature and government to teach the importance of using freedom responsibly. The book, Watership Down, Does an excellent job in using analogy to teach the responsibility of being free. Ayn Rand’s books can be used to coach responsibility in government classes along with the writings of our founding fathers.

If we can get our classes disciplined at the beginning of the year and revisit our discipline throughout the year, we will cut down on major disruptions and poor choices by our students. Freedom takes a lot of responsibility, if we continue to teach about it and model it, our school community will become a better place to be, and to be from.