Not Brought Up That Way

There are two philosophies about how our government should run. There are those who say that a person's natural rights (life, liberty, property) are more important than the common good of society. And then, there are those who believe citizens should be willing to surrender some of their natural rights to preserve the common good of all. Those on the side of common good (historians would call them "classical republicans") say that all people within a nation should be educated in the same morals and civic virtue. While a purely classical republican point of view would be a little drastic, as a teacher, I can say that it is both interesting and frustrating sometimes to see the diversity in moral opinions among our youth. A young lady in my class today, while debating the health care issue, actually said that we shouldn't pay for the health care of the poor and we should allow them to die because they "aren't worth much to society anyway!" In her defense, I don't think she communicated her opinion the way she really wanted to, still others in the class agreed!

In separate incident today, a fellow co-worker of mine told me that two of my former students, whom she currently has in class, were very rude to her on the first day of school. Later, I saw one of them in the hall and gave him a hard time about it. I asked him why he had been so "mean" to the teacher and his reply was "I wasn't so bad, and who cares, I'm only going to be here for 2 weeks."

I realized as I urged both of these young people to be kind to their teacher, that many of our kids were not brought up to be KIND. Many of them have never had kindness modelled for them. Sadly, they don't even understand what kindness looks like to someone they love, much less someone they just casually know or even an enemy. Is this the problem with America today? Have we simply lost our knowledge of kindness? I can't blame many of these kids for their behavior when I look at it that way. How can I grade a teen on the lack of kindness when he's never heard the lecture or seen the film on it? Schools around the country are starting to teach students how NOT to be bullies! Can you believe that? What has happened to parenting in America if our schools have to teach kindness to middle and high schoolers?

I'm not yet a parent, but for those of you out there who are, please take the time to DEMONSTRATE kindness to your children. In the youth ministries that I'm a part of, that will be my new goal. Our kids and our teens need our example and we are failing them for the most part. Join the "kindness revolution" with me and show them how to live!