in charge, and standards, already hard to find in America's contemporary public schools,
will become unenforceable.
If students dictate and administrators do, students will never learn academic responsibility, and if they can't be held accountable for homework, what other responsibilities will they avoid when they get older?
But in another sense, teachers and students do exist in a partnership of sorts.
Teachers are there to satisfy the needs of the student, and the student, while perhaps not being the most experienced/ knowledgeable person
on what his/her needs actually are (versus wants), at least should be afforded some say.
In addition, we must remember what the purpose of education is, and that there are different levels of education.
In high school, the focus is not so much on learning actual material.
The focus is on developing study habits, and on social interaction.
The best secondary schools promote an environment in which individual creativity and pacing can be developed, where students are taught to thinkon their own, and learn to debate and argue in a scholarly way, through writing and other formal methods of discourse.
Group collaboration and interpersonal skills are developed and honed.
The actual details of what is studied and tested is of less importance.
Whether a student reads Maya Angelou, or Yeats, or Euripides essentially is beside the point as long as a student's mind is cultivated, not just their ability to record and recite.
What is important is that secondary students develop and grow in the hands of the professionals.
The secondary educational experience is designed to prepare a student for college.
It is in college where the individual learns to examine the world and how it works, and the individual's place in it.
As for duty, it is the educators' duty not simply to determine the curriculum, but to present it effectively.
They cannot half-heartedly paint it on the blackboard, they must enliven it and actually teach.
Hard work must be lauded, while freeloaders are punished.
These are the duties of teachers, and the duty of the students is not just to learn or study, but to grow. An independent mind is what students need, and that mind has to be in a position to want and be able to question beyond the material p
resented, not simply to question its legitimacy. That distinction, though subtle, is the difference between letting the students follow a self-destructive course of premature self-determination on the one hand , and permitting on the other hand the fostering of great talents through a cooperative, mentoring relationshipliuxuepaper.com