Prerequisite: A Definition of the Word Responsibility

Every teacher that has ever existed has done his/her best to teach the subject of responsibility. Something about how the subject has been communicated, verbally and non-verbally, continues to produce less than desirable results.

• A customer sued McDonalds for a hot coffee burn.
  
• Smokers sue cigarette companies for lung damage.
  
• Divorce lawyers thrive on the blame (adversarial) communication model, the model taught to education majors and parents alike.
  
• Teachers resort to pathetic begging and strikes for funding, blaming others for their inability to effect satisfactory wages or student-learning through clear communication

The above suggests that there is a distinction between saying the right words regarding responsibility, and, communicating from, operating from, responsibility. The premise here being that when responsibility is "taught/discussed" by a teacher stuck in ignorance and hypocrisy, the communication doesn't get gotten.

For example: If a teacher can't inspire his/her spouse to consistently honor the housework-chore agreements then anything the teacher may tell a student about integrity, creating/keeping agreements, or responsibility, are just good ideas.

When a truth is delivered via hypocrisy it's heard and stored but seldom acted upon automatically.  For many the advice (wise truths) from well-meaning but hypocritical parents, about agreements, lying, gossiping, or eating correctly, still isn't acted upon automatically, instead, most are driven to not do what they have been "taught," what they intuitively know works.

I've yet to read a news article that describes the classroom-load problem (number of students per teacher) to be the results of the collective communication-skills of the administrators, staff and teachers of a school system.

Never have I read an article quoting a Superintendent of Education having said,

I just don't have the communication-skills to cause the community and our legislators to support me when I say it will take X$ for me to get the job done as you say you want. Heck, I can't even get my principals to consistently turn in their reports on time.

I've never read a newspaper article quoting an educator as saying,

Our salary and funding problems and unsatisfactory SAT scores mirror my own communication skills.

What I continually read in the newspapers are reasons and blaming.

Put another way, if one is not clear about responsibility, if one operates from blame then what they impart non-verbally gets gotten (recreated) by the children who hang around them. Hollow hypocritical words about responsibility create unconscious disrespect. Students unconsciously communicate this accumulated disrespect later in life when as citizens it comes time to vote for teacher pay raises.

On the next page you will be asked to read the dictionary definition of the word responsibility; see if you can tell why it doesn't sink in. You are not yet agreeing to do the tutorial.