Lessons in responsibility not soon forgotten
Teaching children to act responsibly is a critical part of their development. Among the complexities of this task is defining responsible behavior in a world where basic values are often challenged and disputed.
Recently while visiting my mother, I began rummaging through some mementoes from my childhood and came across some papers I wrote in the sixth grade. The assignment required the students in our class to read material from the lives of famous individual and then write about how their decisions and behavior illustrated responsibility. The heroes we studied were not from sports or entertainment. They were, instead, individuals who were noted for their service to others. Abraham Lincoln, Albert Schweitzer, and Florence Nightingale were three of these individuals.
Using good judgment and making wise choices lay at the foundation of their acts of responsibility, a premise that we all agreed upon before looking for characteristics which demonstrated responsibility in their lives.
The exercise culminated in a compilation of our varied opinions and included the following:
• We all agreed that each of the famous people in our survey displayed a great deal of empathy in the lives of those they touched. The genuine caring, compassion, and concern which enabled them to care unconditionally for those around them was evident. They were able to do this without regard for what they might expect to receive in return, making "giving freely of one's self" an easily understood concept for a group of sixth graders.
• The consensus of our class was that this group of individuals acted in an honest and above board fashion, not selectively, but as a matter of course. This reflexive, consistent, and predictable approach to life engendered trust in the lives of those they touched.
• This pool of approximately thirty sixth graders also decided that we felt acting responsibly entailed making decisions and choices based upon objective evidence, logic, and reason, rather than prejudice, self-serving desires, or poorly thought out impulsive whims. (One of the obvious benefits of an exercise such as this with sixth graders is to hopefully demonstrate the contrast between the way sixth graders often act and the way the heroes with maturity and unselfishness acted).
• As a group we also decided that the leaders demonstrated varying types and degrees of courage, such as willingness to speak up for their principles, to risk rejection, and to endure hardships when necessary. (Again, our teacher was very wise in presenting this material at this point in our peer pressure prone lives).
• The ability to admit mistakes and learn from them was found in their lives. We all agreed that responsible people are not perfect people, but are, instead, individuals who see less than perfect performance as acceptable and an opportunity to grow and develop, not settling for mediocrity, but avoiding the need to be perfect. In other words, as kids we learned that a good try is better than no try.
Although this sixth grade compendium of views on responsibility is very incomplete and subjective, it is perhaps not a bad place to start when trying to teach children about responsibility. And finding it in my mother's box of saved materials, I realized she must have thought it a good lesson to review.
Copyright c 1996 Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D.
