This is a day and age I often refer to as the “pass the buck” age. Parents, more and more often, are expecting more and more out of everyone else but themselves. Daycare providers are being asked to do more than keep little Billy and Emma safe while Mom and Dad are at work. Now they are expected to potty train, teach foreign languages and begin teaching the Three R’s as to prepare the kids for Kindergarten. By the time children reach Kindergarten, more and more parents are less and less available making full-day Kindergarten the norm. And so it continues, on, throughout high school. Teachers have lower budgets and higher expectations thrust upon them, thanks to the No Child Left Behind act. And as controversial as this act is, it and other mandates of its variety send a clear message to parents – let us be accountable for making your child a success, don’t you parents worry about it at all. And, to be fair, it is also the message we tax payers are sending to our representatives – if we have to pay, you’d better educate to our heightened expectations. In other words, we want the bang for our buck – the same buck we are so eager to pass.
But truly, we pay taxes so that our children will be educated and will be able to go on to become successful adults. This is understandable. We want oversight. We have a right to expect that we get what we pay for. But now, if our schools didn’t have enough on their plates, they are being hit with the sticky job of traversing character education. What were once the responsibilities of parents and churches are now often pushed onto educators. If Billy is a bully, it is the school’s job to fix him and teach him Right from Wrong. The parents will learn about it in an email. The schools don’t truly have the time to devote to educating our children’s character on top of their academic requirements, do they? Yet, more and more, we are hearing the media reports about prayer in school, teaching morals, offering creationism as a “science” along side the teaching of evolution. What happened to Sunday school? Can parents no longer be bothered to teach their children anything, anymore? Not even these most personal belief systems? Why are we asking those who we pay only to instill the academic basics in our children to also step up and, effectively, parent our children for us? Are we truly too busy?
Often the topic of morals and character education is viewed from a religious standpoint. But, religion aside, to me it’s about passing the buck. How dare we decide to have children, bring these children into the world, and walk away from them insisting that every last job other than the very basics – clothing and shelter – are the responsibility of others? When does it end? When do we stop passing the buck, stop making excuses, stop forcing others to do the jobs that are ours by choice of parenthood? When we as a nation learn to stop passing the buck we will all be surprised to experience that character education that begins at home will take their children further than anything others could possibly try to instill.
Let the schools do their job and leave the character education to the parents!