Responsibility

[walfin]

That.


I remember one time , It was my turn to give an oral presentation (while being recorded). I didn't do the assignment, but the teacher (total ass) insisted that I be recorded anyway. So when they started the recording process, I just sat in my chair while everyone just stared at me.

At first I put my head down and was contemplating on taking a small nap, but when I brought my head back up and noticed everyone still staring at me, I just got up and left the classroom.

If the teacher was caring, you would have hurt him/her pretty badly.

And what about the teacher's actions?

Assignments are meant to be done for the purpose of learning.

Notwithstanding the subjective perspective of the student of whether that purpose would have been achieved by that presentation or not, was it truly so onerous to do that assignment? Did it take superhuman strength? Did it cause untold suffering and pain to the student to do that assignment?

Has it not been considered that the teacher is hoping for at least a last-ditch attempt to try and do the presentation, lack of preparation notwithstanding? That the student was at least interested enough that s/he has bothered to find out something, anything, on the presentation topic at all?

Of course, what I have said mayn't be entirely fair. WeAreTheStrange has yet to be heard on this, and I know neither the teacher nor student personally. And in any case, I am in no position to pass judgment on WeAreTheStrange's actions and anybody else on this forum may take anything I say to be of no consequence. It is the listener that chooses whether to dismiss, or take a step back and reflect, after all.

A friend of mine once made a physics teacher (a girl) cry. Perhaps some might think that was admirable. I felt bad.

Didn't really mean for the thread to turn serious. But well.

One's desire to succeed or not is his own subjective perspective. Punishment is only minor conditioning. What matters is one's choice. If I did not do my homework, let me fail. If I did, let me pass. "Discipline" of this kind---considering the age of the student, independence and the value of choice---is unnecessary and is also possibly only the result of someone's ego.

What do you think?

In my view, the age of the student would raise the expectation of responsibility all the more. We are bound to allow people to refuse responsibility (except where they have expressly consented to undertake it) in the name of choice if we agree that the individual is free insofar as s/he does not harm others - but we should do everything in our power to discourage behaviour that evinces a clear disregard for responsibility because it hampers the continued functioning of society.

It is assumed that the continued functioning of society (not necessarily as we know it to be currently) is beneficial.

It is also to be considered that no "discipline" was meted out in this case. The teacher merely enforced specific performance of a requirement of the course. The student apparently was at liberty to choose to do nothing save appear on camera (of which prior notice was likely to have been given) and there is nothing to show that WeAreTheStrange suffered any consequences as a result of refusing to give a presentation.

I am not an SJ and would readily admit that I do not always practice what I preach.

I apologise if there have been previous threads made on this topic, and will be happy if a mod merges this thread if there is a pre-existing thread.

 

[Words]

Society is lost without individuality.

"Responsibility", the illusion of obligation, is often used as society's way of control.

It is also to be considered that no "discipline" was meted out in this case. The teacher merely enforced specific performance of a requirement of the course. The student apparently was at liberty to choose to do nothing save appear on camera (of which prior notice was likely to have been given) and there is nothing to show that WeAreTheStrange suffered any consequences as a result of refusing to give a presentation.

Teacher A knows Student A has nothing yet Teacher A insists on "wasting time". What explains this action?

 

[WeAreTheStrange]

Well, I never thought my comment would raise such questions.

I left out a few details in my story (because I thought they were not relevant with the thread), that I guess ill share now for clarification.

I did not do the assignment, but it was because of some issues I was having at the time ( besides the common procrastination). In any case, I had explained to her that I was not in a very positive mood and she asked me if I had completed the assignment; I of course answered honestly. She did seem to understand and told me that we would talk after class.

So, now we're back at the point where i'm sitting at my desk and it's my turn... we all know what happens then(and now you know why I stated that she was a total ass).

I would like to contribute to the thread topic but my laptop "died" and writing this on my phone has become quite tedious.

 

[Spectrum]

Society is lost without individuality.

"Responsibility", the illusion of obligation, is often used as society's way of control.



Teacher A knows Student A has nothing yet Teacher A insists on "wasting time". What explains this action?

Words basically stated my reply, so I suppose I have nothing new to contribute at the moment.

 

[Reptillian]

In this society, it has been observed that people have been very much affected by the adults of this countries saying that kids and teenagers don't deserve more responsibility due to the fact that they're not doing anything other than school which according to them is easy to go through when it obviously doesn't always help people in the end. Responsibility according to society is the legal obligation you have and going through work. The argument that the employed people should have more rights is invalid since they're missing on the employed and it is stating that the unemployed don't deserve rights. I don't honestly get it when adults uses this argument when they're not going to let us have more rights which defeats their validity of the argument in the first place.

Just my two cent.

 

[walfin]

Teacher A knows Student A has nothing yet Teacher A insists on "wasting time". What explains this action?

This was my original response:
Has it not been considered that the teacher is hoping for at least a last-ditch attempt to try and do the presentation, lack of preparation notwithstanding? That the student was at least interested enough that s/he has bothered to find out something, anything, on the presentation topic at all?

After all, teachers are paid to stimulate interest in a subject. You may claim that many of them do not do so, or that it is one's own choice to decide what to do with their lives, but society cannot afford to have too many people drop out of school. I'm not saying that this isolated incident would cause that, but if no action is taken across the board to try and enforce at least a bare minimum standard of performance in school, that is what is likely to result. Though of course, it is possible to grant special concessions if the situation merits, but these can only be granted sparingly because they are exceptions to the general rule.

I believe this applies to work as well as school. If you turn up for work but refuse to do any work at all for a significant period of time, and the employer is not allowed to fire you, the slow but sure death of the economy will result.

Furthermore, if the non-performance of one person in the class is accepted, the rest of the class who did the work would certainly find it unfair. So what if he gets an F? I was required to do this, why should someone else be exempted entirely?

A lack of responsibility among the citizenry is exactly why socialism does not work well in practice.

She did seem to understand and told me that we would talk after class.

Seems like she's a bit crafty then, didn't promise not to force you to sit in front anyway. Or did she?

But I guess the discussion is no longer really about that incident.

 

[Reptillian]

After all, teachers are paid to stimulate interest in a subject. You may claim that many of them do not do so, or that it is one's own choice to decide what to do with their lives, but society cannot afford to have too many people drop out of school. I'm not saying that this isolated incident would cause that, but if no action is taken across the board to try and enforce at least a bare minimum standard of performance in school, that is what is likely to result.

You're right in the sense how school is used to support the economy, but the opposing arguing viewpoint such as how schools nationwide is changing for the worse each decades can be generated from studying the failure of the education system which can be used as the argument against having people sticking through school against their will when it comes to having a need for an educated society. The arguing viewpoint would clearly state that the history of schooling have led society to be less illiterate each day and the effects of having people not being able to reach the standards due to social factors and environmental factors that actually have a negative effects on a large mass of people. There were a whole lot more challenging classes back in the days before 20 years ago and today, we got classes so easy that we're basically studying simple elementary school geometry in high school and there were so many people inside certain classes unable to tell what angle was it and the concept of angle or even know how to order of operations. Society can afford people dropping out of public school, but only when the society changes it entire thoughts on the modern education system and actually come up with a solution while sticking through it and there were cases where dropouts actually benefited society. Needless to say, try thinking about the other side and see people advocating being against school just to make your own opinion.

Care to start a debate?

 

[walfin]

I don't know whether this may be considered a debate or not, but I am simply airing my views. If a debate requires a particular format of airing those views it doesn't matter to me, but I am happy to comply with those rules as long as they do not restrict content. Form is less of the essence than substance.

Some stylistic guidelines in any discussion (debate or no) that may be beneficial are (IMHO):
1. Paragraphing helps reading
2. Some quick proofreading on our posts to ensure a reasonable degree of grammatical coherence is helpful too
3. Sentences should not be overly long

"Nationwide" does not really mean anything significant to me. INTPf is a rather international community even if most denizens of this forum come from 1 or 2 countries.

I cannot see how schools are reducing literacy too. Perhaps that is the present situation in your country. If that is so, it must be that the implementation of the education system is lacking in some way. Developing countries have many illiterate people simply because there are no schools to teach them to read and write. In any case, this is point is only tangentially relevant as my original topic was about the benefit of responsibility as an abstract concept.

Responsibility extends beyond school life. School, i.e. a phase of committed, largely full-time learning, is generally a pretty short phase in the life of most people (for the most part it is <25 years; slightly more than a quarter of the ~80 year lifespan in many developed nations); it does not even take up all of a student's day. My comments about WeAreTheStrange's action (as it was recounted in his post in the other thread) had less to do with the fact that it happened in school than to do with what I perceived as a disregard of obligations. I would have disliked it just as much if, for instance, he had agreed to perform something (e.g. a musical performance) at a friend's birthday party but cancelled at the last minute (for instance, just before the performance was about to start) without a good cause and without finding a replacement.

You may then contend that he has not explicitly agreed to make the presentation. That may be true, but he has implicitly agreed to do the presentation by remaining in that class. It may have been possible to inform the teacher at an earlier date of his inability to present on that date so that sufficient notice could have been given. Alternatively, if it was unreasonable to have to present and be recorded on camera, reasonable steps could have been taken to seek an exemption from the presentation or withdraw from the class.

I have said in an earlier post that this is no longer about WeAreTheStrange. Accordingly, I am not judging or attempting to judge how right or wrong that particular action may be, or even saying that it matters whether it was right or wrong. I am merely saying that that showed, at face value, a lack of responsibility, and that condoning irresponsibility by not imposing consequences would generally be bad for society. This is why I agree with the teacher's actions, and why I put it to WeAreTheStrange that the teacher, if she was truly caring, may have felt hurt, to suggest that he should consider the impact of an irresponsible action on others (perhaps that's the INTP tendency to use Fe to communicate at work). A more serious irresponsible action in the future could have more consequences than the stares of classmates and the possible unpleasant feelings of a teacher.

 

[asmit127]

You want to discuss the lack of responsibility within society in general? Great!

Today we are babied, responsibility is so removed from the individual it's not surprising that people go against it in minor things like the event in the OP, even without good reason. (which it seems there was in this case anyway) From naughty children at school being "punished" by being effectively banned from the site (isn't that like sending an alcoholic to the pub?) to excess health and safety laws negating any kind of common sense to being encouraged multiple times a day (via posters/billboards) to have STI tests rather than not sleeping around in the first place. And if you do get drunk, sleep around and land up pregnant don't worry - just have an abortion. Whatever happens it's not your fault, get it "fixed" and if you're lucky get rich (sue someone) in the mean time. Hell, in the UK even money isn't needed to be responsible for - you can quit your job and if you can't afford somewhere to live the state will pay for it!

Not sure how much of this is the same elsewhere, but this is how things are here. I fear I too have strayed from the abstract concept idea behind the thread but in a couple of generations I'm not sure anyone will know what being responsible is, to follow all the guidance forced on you will dictate your every action.

 

[Reptillian]

I cannot see how schools are reducing literacy too. Perhaps that is the present situation in your country. If that is so, it must be that the implementation of the education system is lacking in some way. Developing countries have many illiterate people simply because there are no schools to teach them to read and write. In any case, this is point is only tangentially relevant as my original topic was about the benefit of responsibility as an abstract concept.

Just some stuff you might wanna look up, look at the old high school tests and compare them to the today's high school tests just to see how the level of difficulty are slowly getting easier. Look how alternative form of education helps some people and even benefits them. Look at illiterate graduates. It's all mind-opening. Of course, there is always some percentage of undereducated people in all form of education.

The problem with school these day is due to the fact that there is a large student to teacher ratio and the lack of individualized form of teaching/learning/observation techniques needs for several different students. Each person have different cognitive usage which in turns leads into different style of observation and different ways of learning using the senses. Some might succeed at artistry due to the fact that they have enough experience and control being developed from experience and some might succeed at reading due to experience and development of the brain, but cognitive development shows that each people is born with different areas of brain functions which in turns leads into different usage of the brain as a result of the combination of genetics and experience. Genetic and experience are the main factor to neurological development. No two students are alike and humans develops at different rates. The limitation of the school classes environment cannot simply help all students and the problems with students that haven't learned efficiency has to do with neuro-psychological aspects of the student or pure dysfunctional brain although some of them do have some excellent brain.

I know this has been mentioned before, but I'll just sum up some of the details.

*Teachers have limited teaching possibilities because they're having a great number of students to deal with at once, and that they need to comply with the school rules.

*Curriculum are dysfunctional due to the varied preferences and learning methods of the students, which leads into results that aren't necessarily good.

*The state school environment cannot always be tailored to students with special needs, such as sightless students, students who have auditory issues, or simply students with different personalities, such as introverts. This can lead to frustration, which in turn can yield unsatisfactory results.

*Some people in the educational institution place higher value on supporting the economy, rather than providing satisfactory education for the students.

The problem with developing countries is the lack of resources for learning materials such as math, reading, writing, and several other different subjects instead of lack of school and this is already backed up by the powers of the human mind to learn efficiently as such a young age and the fact that resources are required in order to master subjects whether it is from art to writing. The studies of babies have shown that they are capable of understanding written languages and the sources of mastery has to come from certain resources.

As for the country part, I live in the United States. You'll see where I'm coming from. As for the guidelines, I'm not going to have a proofreader so soon and I'm hard of hearing coming from another country, so grammatical errors should be expected.

Responsibility extends beyond school life. School, i.e. a phase of committed, largely full-time learning, is generally a pretty short phase in the life of most people (for the most part it is <25 years; slightly more than a quarter of the ~80 year lifespan in many developed nations); it does not even take up all of a student's day. My comments about WeAreTheStrange's action (as it was recounted in his post in the other thread) had less to do with the fact that it happened in school than to do with what I perceived as a disregard of obligations. I would have disliked it just as much if, for instance, he had agreed to perform something (e.g. a musical performance) at a friend's birthday party but cancelled at the last minute (for instance, just before the performance was about to start) without a good cause and without finding a replacement.

While it is agreeable that responsibility extends beyond school life. School isn't always about learning as observed in documents that have shown alternative education such as homeschooling or even unschooling style such as sudbury valley school could help students go beyond the average scores of those who go through school. School is also about habit-forming behavior, obedience, and a bit of psychological control using social manipulation, information control, and habitat forming. Limiting access to certain sites using filters are observed to be a way of information control and can be used as such while setting up a common social structure with a common setting does make students builds up habit due to the fact that the students learned how the system works and go by the rule. Any teacher could spread some ideas at a young age and multiple teachers can go by the idea which is a form of social manipulation. It has been observed that the youth stage of development usually influence future behavior due to the fact that when the brain keeps developing while the learning rates are generally higher than those who are older. The brain doesn't neccessarily stops at 20 as observed in recent documents which shows that brain scans proved that brain development go over 30 years old.

As for the number of time it can take, let just say we have a student who stays into the school environment for at least 7 hours. Ok, let add up to 3 hours for the homework. They need to sleep 4 hours after the homework. So it is from 7:30-2:30,2:30-5:30,5-30-9:30. That is around 10/14 of the whole day being spent which other would be 5/7 of the day. In 5 days of doing school, the student spend 50 hours into things that are related to school and the student have around at least 20 hours of free-time. How could a student spend his free-time since he's probably exhausted from doing around 10 hours of work straight? What problem can occur for a student who have hard time learning using school style of education yet no problem using the autodidact method?

You want to discuss the lack of responsibility within society in general? Great!

Today we are babied.

Reading all the way to there. I feel your situation.

 

[oldspice]

Look back to the creation of the school system. It was started in Prussia as an indoctrination center. They soldiers needed a reason to fight for, which was given to them in school. During the Industrial Revolution it turned into a system to condition future workers. Repetitive, mindless tasks for hours a day.

School is only a minor fragment of education. We have come to use the terms education and school interchangeably. Education is what you learn throughout life. The public education system is not the answer.

Our group at school brought Brett Veignotte, from School Sucks Podcast, to speak. It was a good conversation. UConn-athon is the event. You can check out his podcasts here... http://schoolsucks.podOmatic.com/

School, especially primary education, is only a measure of obedience. Do exactly what you are told and you will get an A. All you have to do is regurgitate what comes out of your teacher's mouth.

 

[Reptillian]

@oldspice: Take a look at toward the destruction of schooling made by John Taylor Gatto. He probably wrote a book related to the writing. http://anti-politics.net/school/ Last time I check, there was picture of scientific experiment that was made back in the day dealing with conditioning.

 

[oldspice]

Yeah, thanks. I have heard him referenced to many times. I never got the chance to sit down and read one of his books. On my to do list. He was on the documentary that connected schools to prisons (cant think of the name right now), which I recommend.

*Little off topic... sorry.
I was thinking about going to grad school. I am going to be graduating from university next year. I am double majoring in actuarial math and horticulture. I plan on a career (not sure how long) in the actuary field, and possibly teaching or something horticulture related later in life. After reading up on the school system we have today, this alternative looks bleak (as much as I want to get kids to think for themselves).

 

[walfin]

Today we are babied, responsibility is so removed from the individual it's not surprising that people go against it in minor things like the event in the OP, even without good reason. (which it seems there was in this case anyway) From naughty children at school being "punished" by being effectively banned from the site (isn't that like sending an alcoholic to the pub?) to excess health and safety laws negating any kind of common sense to being encouraged multiple times a day (via posters/billboards) to have STI tests rather than not sleeping around in the first place. And if you do get drunk, sleep around and land up pregnant don't worry - just have an abortion. Whatever happens it's not your fault, get it "fixed" and if you're lucky get rich (sue someone) in the mean time. Hell, in the UK even money isn't needed to be responsible for - you can quit your job and if you can't afford somewhere to live the state will pay for it!

Not sure how much of this is the same elsewhere, but this is how things are here. I fear I too have strayed from the abstract concept idea behind the thread but in a couple of generations I'm not sure anyone will know what being responsible is, to follow all the guidance forced on you will dictate your every action.

Yes. This is precisely what I am talking about.

No consequences, not even natural ones.

For example - I would wager that many people would cry "unfairness" if they got an F for doing what the OP did.

And seriously, an F is not enough. If there are 50 courses, and I know I'm smart enough to get, say, a 2:1 (and perhaps I also know that's enough to make a decent living) even if I get an F for 20 courses, I wouldn't mind the F. The degree scroll then becomes meaningless - if 2 people are conferred the same degree but only pass 10 courses in common, what does that mean? There must therefore be some mechanism to force some sort of performance - either force the student to do fulfill the bare minimum requirement of what s/he is told, or immediately expel them if they score 3 Fs.

Not that I think the other end of the spectrum is healthy. Corporal punishment has been inflicted on secondary school boys in my country for infractions such as not doing homework, which I believe is stupid and pointless since it has no relation to the offence besides being a form of gender discrimination. It isn't funny. People actually get scars from these things. But the main reason why I oppose these things is because they do not encourage responsibility.

Anyway. I do not care so much about schools as society in general, and so I'm gonna ignore the "our education system is messed up" stuff. Responsibility is about considering others. It is not limited to schools, work, the law, or the government - fundamentally it is about respecting other humans and their rights.

 

[LAM]

School makes you do stuff you don't want to, so you will be able to do such things later. Its all nice to sit down and ignore everyone, but that way you won't achieve shit. society doesn't give qa shit about you if you don't about attempting to please society. Except if you want to be stuck in 9-10 jobs at maccas. Or usually some kind of retail shop.

You'll do what you have to do, except if you want to fail in society. And trust me, nobody could ever want such dull shit jobs as you would get out of failing...

 

[walfin]

And trust me, nobody could ever want such dull shit jobs as you would get out of failing...

You may be surprised. Perhaps nobody actively wants those jobs, but I'm sure there are plenty who simply don't give a shit.

I yearn for a day when there are no such jobs. That the only jobs are those that require brain usage, but yet there are enough jobs for everyone. That way the only jobless people would be the Lumpenproletariat, who refuse to use their brains. But even they would be given a job if only they would work.

Ah well. Ideal worlds never exist, else they'd cease being ideal.

EDIT: Well, after reading asmit's post, perhaps a world without such jobs is indeed pretty selfish.

But the human is capable of more. Humans doing jobs that can be automated away is still a waste to me.

 

[asmit127]

And trust me, nobody could ever want such dull shit jobs as you would get out of failing...

For an extraverted people oriented person a job in a shop is great - no pressure, plenty of people to talk to and help and a discount card to offset the unimpressive salary. It may not be for you but using their brain constantly isn't for them.

Life (and society as a subgroup of it) needs all types. Without heartless people doing animal testing drugs to cure us of diseases would not have been found, without kind people looking after others till such a drug was around more would have died of depression... I could do neither of these jobs any more than I could work in a shop, yet can see how both are rewarding. Only one requires paying attention in school!

To link education to money to happiness is a big stretch, I could happily live my whole life on my boss's salary and he doesn't have A levels (the next level after compulsary education in the UK) let alone a degree, and it took him just seven years of working to get where he is. I wasted 5 in education instead!