Who is responsible?
REMEMBER those times in school when one of our classmates misbehaved, the teacher got wind of it and demanded to know who was the guilty party? Remember how no one owned up and so the teacher punished the whole class? Remember how we felt? We felt frustrated, furious, bitter that we had been victimised while the teacher felt justified, vindicated, pleased that he had done his job (and the culprit smiled within because he had beaten the system). The teacher took the lead in thinking he must make sure everyone behaves and he did so by teaching them all a lesson. But is it the right lesson? Did the guilty person own up (even with the threat of universal punishment)?
Did anyone stand up and say who the guilty person was? Did anyone even ask the guilty person to own up? Who was to blame for the corporate (not corporal) punishment?
Interestingly we are now living in times where everyone must stay at home because some people are infected with corona virus and some people step out of line; as a result, we are all punished when the vast majority of us have done nothing wrong. We are not trusted to behave appropriately.
Authorities do not know who has stepped out of line while people carry on regardless because of the unlikelihood of them being caught by the few in authority who cannot be (and are not) everywhere.
How does that make us feel? Whose fault is it? Who is responsible for the state we are in?
The scenario in both paragraphs above are the same and have come about because we do not teach children how to be responsible and those children become adults who have not learned to take responsibility for themselves and for others.
We tell them to be responsible and we tell them to obey those in authority but we do not teach them how to be responsible for themselves or others.
The school and the state (the leadership) take the responsibility for everyone’s behaviour (which they physically cannot control) instead of everyone taking responsibility for everyone’s behaviour.
We are all products of our schools and therefore we simply reproduce the system. We simply programme youngsters (adults-in-waiting) to behave in a certain way when authority is present, by punishing them if they do not, instead of instilling principles in them to know what is right.
Criminals know they can get away with breakins because they know the police have no transport and cannot reach the scene of the crime, drivers know they can speed because there are no speed cameras. So will we all be banned from driving because some people break the law and drive dangerously?
Our huge emphasis on leadership (not to mention the style of leadership) is all wrong, we need to give the responsibility to be responsible to everyone. We need to instil the understanding in our children that we all have a responsibility to behave according to the rules and laws of society and we all have the responsibility to ensure those around us do the same; if others do not, we must learn how we can tell them not to behave in such a way because it will affect and even damage them as well as potentially the rest of us.
It is not a matter of seeing if we can avoid getting caught and if we cannot avoid it then simply take the punishment.
Perhaps those countries that give the responsibility for responsible behaviour to their citizens during this lockdown have understood this.
The bottom line is this: we have raised generation after generation of people who do not know how to take responsibility for themselves or for their neighbours because they have never been given responsibility or been taught it.
The purpose of education, not surprisingly, is to educate not to punish. Everyone has a right to education, without question; but everyone has a responsibility to do what is right with that right – and that is to be responsible for themselves and those around them.
So, in reality, education is to blame for lockdown restrictions! Schools, not just in Zimbabwe, are to blame for the fact that we are all holed up in our homes and schools are closed, because we do not teach youngsters to take responsibility for themselves or for others and leaders do not hand on that responsibility to the followers. We must educate our children better.
Maybe it is a good idea that schools are closed because, if they open, pupils will continue to be taught the wrong things and lead us further into trouble in the future!
So the answer is to keep everyone at home where we can do nothing wrong and cause no trouble to anyone — or how about teaching a new way…?