Saturday, March 10, 2012

Please and thank you

I had a friend over today...her daughter said, "do it again!" after she was spinning her around and V responded, "Do it again please" but then thought better of it and said, "No, it's okay. You don't have to say please." And then looked to me and said, "A friend of mine was saying, 'why have them say please at this age? They don't understand why they are doing it so you are essentially having them act like robots. And are you having them say please for themselves or for you?'"
I didn't agree with that. I argued that "please" and "thank you" are just proper etiquette. And you have a child say it because you want them to learn early on how to be polite. My reasoning was that it doesn't matter if they don't understand why they are doing it. It is proper and when they grow old enough to understand then they will have already developed proper etiquette.
And V had countered with, "yeah, but that is all so 50's-ish...back in the day."
And I retorted, and that is the problem with society today. This casualness so that children these days don't understand respect. They don't give their teachers or any adults any respect.
In my opinion there is less learning being accomplished in schools today because we have these "new agey" parent types that expect children to "parent" themselves (because we don't want to harm their self-esteem) and of course they can't because they don't have the ability so they go to school and teachers are now spending a good portion of their time trying to get children to sit and listen. Teachers now have to attempt to "parent" 30-40 children all of varying backgrounds and temperaments, how are they even expected to do their jobs?
But I can jump on that soap box all day. It really is something that wears on my brain. How incompetent our school system is and how are we even allowing this to continue? Why aren't more parents up in arms about this situation?
Here is my issue: I can send my child to a private school. But what about the thousands of parents that don't have that luxury? And the children that are suffering because of it? These children are our future. Why are there not more people (in higher level positions, positions that could really affect change) more concerned about the well-being of their "neighbors"? Why aren't there more Bill Gateses out there?

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