Looking After Students
In elementary school teachers look after every single thing each student does. They make sure each assignment is submitted, every crayon drawing completed. Every year the teacher involvement decreases, but certain checks are kept in place. The freshman and sophomore years of high school maintain many of the restrictions of junior high. However, after that, many teachers choose to release students to their own accountability. A mentality is adopted: if the student doesn’t want to do the work, it’s their fault and they’ll receive a zero.
Personally, I find this mantra refreshing. Extraneous assignments are not doled out and continuous checkups on progress are not performed. Granted, without these checks some students will struggle to pass the necessary classes for graduation. However, when students get to be 17 or 18, they need to learn responsibility and self-discipline. Some senior classes (teachers) maintain the same mentality of the earlier high school classes. Their constant progress checks provide a safety net, but the students don’t really have to be responsible. This is frustrating both for students who keep track of their work and for those who don’t. At this point in a student’s life, these teacher accountability checks won’t turn around bad study habits. When many of the students in this group are legal adults, they should be treated as such. They should be free to succeed on their own, and yes…free to fail on their own.
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