Who is responsible for getting students ready to be … uh … responsible?
I was telling a non-educator friend that the trend in education is that if the kid isn’t thriving academically, it’s the adults’ job to figure out where the problem is and what interventions would be needed to help get the kid back on track. It’s a backbone idea of professional learning communities and other reform movements like Response to Intervention.
“Since when did I stop being responsible for me?” he said.
Ha. Good point. At what point do we start holding students responsible for their own learning? Most of us, when we entered undergraduate school, quickly realized that our success lay completely on our own shoulders. No more scaffolding.
The AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner take a stab at this by outlining student responsibilities throughout the learning process, but it occurs to me that issues of student responsibility are currently standing in contrast to some of the reform movements that hold teachers increasingly responsible.
Today’s Washington Post guest blog post by Daniel Willingham asks the same question. At what point do we fail kids by not holding them responsible?
July 14th, 2010 at 4:52 am
The problem isn’t just in education, it’s all around: remember the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit? Our current societal default is “I’m not to blame… someone else needs to take responsibility for my failure/problem/setback… or I’ll sue until someone does.” How do we change this mentality?
When I was growing up, if the teacher gave me a bad grade or if I got detention or my report card had negative comments, my parents would tell me to study, or behave, or whatever was required (unless there was a clear case that I was not to blame). Today, parents blame the teachers for the same things, backing their children against the school. How do we educate parents?
Only when we solve those issues can we expect that students will learn to take responsibility.