Valley Springs High School
Valley Springs, Arkansas
Teacher: Lavina Grandon

 

Personal Responsibility in Our Communities Today
By Cara McCutcheon
Grade 12, Age 17

 

 

How does the role of personal responsibility in improving the quality of life affect our communities today?  Many people attempt to answer this question with their own personal opinions.  Research has been done on this question and the answer(s) may have been found.  Personal responsibilities should be found in the home, in human interaction, and also in the teaching of children by mentoring.

           

First, personal responsibilities should be found in the home.  Today many families are either broken up because of divorce or the family is made out of wedlock.  An article by Pat Wingert says that “it is common for unmarried couples to move in together, pick out china, buy a dog, or even conceive a child without bothering with the legalities.”  Dating, courtship, and mating have changed dramatically since the beginning of the century.  Wingert also goes on to say that  “when the children of the millennium begin to settle down, the venerable institution of marriage maybe more flexible and less mandatory than ever.”  What exactly does that mean?  It means that the children growing up in an environment where the parents are living together unmarried will believe that this kind of behavior is okay and carry on the pattern.  The parents of children that do get married generally tend to be happier, healthier, and live a longer life.  Making a home a healthy and proper environment is one of the many personal responsibilities that we, as people and as parents, should act upon.

           

Second, personal responsibility should be found in everyday human interaction.  In exerpts taken from a speech given before the Common Wealth Club in San Fransisco, Kathleen Sullivan says that “in human society, there will be conflicts and the need to find ways to cooperate and coordinate our activities across those conflicts.”  The most common way that people find to coordinate our activities across those conflicts is to hire a lawyer.  Sullivan also comments on the fact that “every time that a lawyer helps to make some deals between individuals or entities, he or she engage in normative ordering.”  Normative ordering is the process of the people whose job it is, day in and day out, to create, find, interpret, adapt, apply and enforce rules and principles that set structured human relationships.  If everyone in today’s society was open-minded and they actually tried to get along with each other, then everyone could and would be happy and content in the communities that they live in.  We should all “have a more open and spirited debate about how we are to live in the future and about what matters in our lives.”  In Richard Eckersley’s article about life, he says that we should set personal goals for ourselves: “Our goal should be to dematerialize society without reducing the quality of life.”  By just getting along in our communities, we have to use the personal responsibilities that we, elders to the generations growing up, were taught. 

           

Third, personal responsibilities should be taught to children by the mentoring of elders.  N’Gai Groal says that “the experts all agree: any effort to help the next generation—especially children at risk—must include mentoring.”  Senior Newsweek editor Johnathan Alter, who has done research on this subject, says that “of all of the social ideas of the last thirty years, it’s the only one that we know works.”  By older people taking on the responsibility of teaching the younger generations morals and ethics, the generation being mentored is less likely to use drugs or alcohol and their productivity levels are more likely to rise.  This is one of many ways that we can all use the personal responsibilities bestowed upon us to make a difference not only to our communities, but to the children of these communities as well.

           

Research and test results show that personal responsibility in our communities today should be found in the home, found in human society, and found in the teaching of children by mentoring.  Each individual task that people face in the world can probably be traced back to the personal responsibilities that they were taught when they were young.  So, if everyone would just show a little compassion to each other, then our communities would be better and safer to grow up in and better to raise families in.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________References

Eckersley, R.  (1999).  Is life really getting better?  The Futurist (January).

Groal, N.  (1998).  Mentoring makes a difference.  Newsweek, 20.

The pockets of poverty world tour.  (1999, July 10).  Economist, p. 23.

Sullivan, K.  (1999, June 9).  The good that lawyers do [Speech posted on the World Wide Web].  Retrieved November 5, 1999 from the World Wide Web: http://www. Singerfoundation.org.

 

Answers To Questions To Required Reading

Q1-How does society invest in marriage in the USA and in Manus?

A1-In Manus the people are concerned about the status of the individual’s relationship and it is a big deal if the couple is divorced.  In the U.S. we don’t really have a concern about these things.

 

Q2-Interview 10 married people. (No names.) State the length and number of each one’s marriages and a line or two of advice from each on how to maintain a long, happy relationship.

A2

 #1-This couple has been married for 5 years.  This is the first marriage for both of them.  The advice is to be really concerned about the way the other feels.

 

#2-This couple has been married for 13 years.  This is the first marriage for both of them.  The advice is to wait until you are both ready to have kids before you do.

 

#3-This couple has been married for 20 years.  This is the second marriage for both of them.  The advice is to learn how to deal with minor problems and not let them get in the way.

 

#4-This couple has been married for 10 years.  This is the first marriage for both of them.  The advice is to respect and honor one another.

 

#5-This couple has been married for 25 years.  This is the first marriage for both of them.  The advice is to learn that you have to do without a lot of things when you get married.

 

 #6-This couple has been married for 14 years.  This is the wife’s first and the husbands second marriage.  The advice is to Love, Honor, and Respect one another.

 

#7-This couple has been married for 30 years.  This is the first marriage for both of them.  The advice is to deal with things in a nice fashion and don’t make to big of a deal out of it.

 

#8-This couple has been married for 7 years.  This is the first marriage for both of them.  The advice is to put the other person’s feelings first, always.

 

#9-This couple has been married for 18 years.  This is the first marriage for both of them. The advice is that you don’t always get what you want but you got to accept it.

 

 #10-This couple has been married for 25 years.  This is the first marriage for the both of them.  The advice is to not get jealous every time the other person is talking to an old friend.

 

Q3-According to Richard Eckersley, what should our collective goal be?

A3-Our collective goal should be to dematerialize society with out reducing the quality of life.

 

Q4-Write a worthy goal for your local community.

A4-The goal for my community should be to try and clean the sides of the roads up more for the tourist to see how beautiful it is.  Also we should spend more time researching the past of our community.

 

Q5-Comment on the excerpts from “Tomorrow’s Child.”

A5-The excerpts had a good point about the way that parents turn their children on to material things instead of being there for them.  It didn’t really make a lot of sense why the statistics about each race was put in, but the statistics were really informative.

 

Q6-How does the fact the USA is a democracy make lawyers particularly helpful, according to Kathleen Sullivan?  How does our diversity, wealth, and size make lawyers particularly helpful?

A6-The U.S. being a democracy is helpful because it protects the rights of each individual.  The diversity helps because is considers the respect for religion, different races, etc.  The wealth of the U.S. is helpful because the law can help solve certain environmental problems that have been going on for years.  The size of the U.S. is helpful in that people can take a great interest in society or they can just stay behind and hide out and not take any interest.

 

Q7-Ms. Sullivan claims bad practices are changed either by regulations or punitive damages.  Which do you prefer and why? Can you think of an alternative?

A7-I would prefer to use regulations because if a person wants to do something to prevent the paying of a crime then regulations can be put on them.  But also a mix between regulations and punitive damages would probably be the best, because that way it wouldn’t be to harsh or to light on the person.

 

Q8-Briefly describe three ways society would benefit from the coming retirement of baby boomers, according to the required reading.

A8-The retirement would give more jobs up for the upcoming adults to get. It would also be good if the retirees would assist the new entrepreneurs in their jobs.  It might even help the community to grow because most of the retirees would start their own businesses.

 

Q9-Evaluate the likelihood of President Clinton’s anti-poverty program making a real impact.  Give at least three reason to back up your conclusions.

A9-The likelihood of it making a real impact is not really great, I don’t think. The statistics show that 35% of former welfare recipients can’t do simple task’s.  The second reason is that 41% couldn’t use a calculator to do simple problems. The third reason is that even if they were willing to work they might not be needed and they would give up.

 

Q10-Name three things Truett Cathy and tom Lewis have in common.

A10-Both of them are high up in a company and have many responsibilities.  Both of them have an interest in the education of the children of today.  And both of them educate the children in one way or another.