I have seen some events unfold in the school that I currently teach.
The ethos of the headteacher’s leadership is one of student empowerment. On the whole this is a very positive approach and the students are able to take responsibility for their learning. This doesn’t always make things easy for the teacher but is much better for the students and at the end of the day we are all there to help the students to learn.
One thing that has struck me has been that of the students ability (or inability) to learn the responsibility to go with their ‘empowered’ rights.
Children are children. They are constantly learning. They need to learn their social behaviours as well as their academic knowledge.
With rights come responsibilities. The two go hand in hand.
Which led me to think about how students learn responsibility. Observing students it could be said that many of them are irresponsible. They make poor decisions when it comes to:
- behaving in enclosed spaces - running around putting other children’s safety at risk
- looking after their belongings - dumping their bags and coats in the corridors
- dealing with adults - sometimes being cheeky and arguing when it is unnecessary
- behaving in a group situation - behaving inappropriately in a classroom when a teacher is trying to help a class learn, in turn spoiling the learning of others
The question is how to help students to learn to become responsible. While we have been giving students more and more ‘rights’ I feel that we have done little to balance that by teaching the responsibilities to go with the rights.
For example, historically students had to clear the building at breaks and had plenty of open space to run around and burn off any excess energy. Now, we have given the students the right to stay indoors at break and most of them choose to do so. For most of the students this works very well, they act in a responsible manner and there are no problems. However, there are a few students that abuse the right to be inside and run around putting the safety of other students at risk.
How should we deal with this situation?
- Should we have outlined that the ability to stay inside is a right and explicitly explained what the responsibility that goes with this right it is?
- Do we take away the right of the students that behave irresponsibly?
Whenever students have rights do we need to explicitly outline what the responsibilities are that go with those rights?
Can we help students to learn responsibility by removing their rights? I believe that rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. It seems logical that the reward for responsibility is the right to continue to do something.
Reward and punishment is the traditional mainstay of behaviour management in schools. If we are to continue to empower our students then perhaps reward and punishment is not directly applicable to the area of student empowerment. Perhaps it should be the the pairing of rights and responsibilities with removal of the rights of those that don’t accept the responsibility.
I for one think that the rights and responsibilities model may prevent the popular student cry of “it’s not fair!”. As long as we are clear and explicit the right to do something is earned by exhibiting the responsibility to go with it then the students will get to practice responsibility if they want all the things in life that are good.
