Rights

and Responsibilities

With the pandemic on our doorstep The Rights of some people may cause problems with My Rights. I have the right not be infected by another exercising his/her right to assemble during this time of Social Distancing as an attempt to ‘flatten the curve’ of the spread of this pandemic. During the last 65 years or so there has been and still is a Rights Movement that has elevated many groups who were lower on the spectrum than should have been to a position on par with group(s) or even higher than the group(s) blamed for keeping them subordinate in the measure of rights. The Rights Movement has made memorable progress in this battle and this is not what may cause problems. Throughout the history of this progress in gaining Rights for numerous suppressed groups, a sister concept of Rights has been ignored. The concept of Responsibility has been completely missed. I remember that at one time in the history of speed limits, ‘Reasonable and Proper’ was actually stated as the limit in many locations. If Speed was such that avoiding an accident was difficult, it was deemed NOT ‘Reasonable and Proper’ and tickets for Speed were issued to all contributing in any way to the difficulty. They were responsible for the problem.

The Obvious situation in Education started about this time also. Among the groups targeted to receive Rights from the Movement were Students. Students were given Rights, and as with all groups, they accepted these Rights with pleasure and humbleness of all groups facing a gift that they deserve. Oh, and by the way, ANY responsibility for learning or the results of the educational process were removed from the shoulders of any member of the group! WHAT, you say? Say it isn’t so! But yet ALL responsibility for the learning process in ALL our schools is on the shoulders of TEACHER. Not even school administration has held up a hand and waved high saying “NO, No, no, administrators have, at least, some of the RESPONSIBILITY for the educational process.”
While all this was falling out of the back-and-forth finger pointing, the person with the most skin-in-the-game, the Student, looked on, saying “I am so glad that everyone has effectively forgotten HISTORY. Until now I have been responsible if any thing went wrong at school. Conduct, learning, following instruction, etc. ad infinitum, was on my shoulder. Now, with these new Rights, all responsibility is taken away. When I got ‘in trouble’ at school, I had twice the ‘in trouble’ at home when those in charge, PARENTS, found out. Don’t say a word and maybe no one will notice.” AND no one did!

Every Rights Movement group unconsciously noticed this syndrome. Groups that really needed help and elevation of status fought a good fight and won their rights. Not a single group said “NO,No, no” don’t take my responsibility from me! LOL. Children got rights, were no longer responsible, parents were no longer responsible for their children who now had RIGHTS. ALL groups received Rights and by-the-way lost responsibility for their actions. Go ahead. Say it isn’t So! I Dare You.

I invite your comments and observations.