Rockridge High School

Taylor Ridge, Illinois

Teacher: Barbara Downey

 

 

The Role Of Personal Responsibility In Improving The Quality Of Life In Our Communities Today.

By Tricia McGreer

Grade 12

 

How can we make life happier, more satisfying, and more interesting?  Many of the problems that society faces today are problems that originate in the younger generation.  Some of these problems include drug and alcohol abuse, dropouts, and school shootings. To improve the quality of life we need to aim our help at today’s youth.

           

The problems that affect society may begin at a very young age.  It is the parents’ personal responsibility to be sure their children grow up right.   Many parents in the United States are working parents.  They need to work to support their children.  With these parents at work all the time this leaves their children either with a baby-sitter or home alone.  The children that are home after school alone are what we call “latchkey” children.  Who will these latchkey children talk to about how their day went when they get home from school? If they are not in school yet, many of these children are at a baby-sitter or daycare where they will not get the attention they need.  As a cause of this, many of these children are in need of a human connection.  Who or what will they turn to?  This may lead to larger problems as they get older.

           

Since these children are in such a need for human connection, they may turn to drugs and alcohol.  Parents may see some of this behavior as just “normal teenage behavior”.  This is not just a phase their children will grow out of.  What many parents don’t realize is that they could lose their children to this “harmless fun”.  This harmless fun is also addicting and can ruin a person’s hope for a good future. 

           

I see examples of this every day.  For instance, there is a homeless man who roams around Muscatine, Iowa.  His relatives are rich and want to take him off the streets.  They say that he is so messed up by the drugs he did when he was younger, that he doesn’t understand and wants to be homeless.  This man, along with many others, could have had a decent life.  How can we stop this from happening?

           

Another problem youth face today is an increasing number of dropouts.  This lack of desire to succeed may cause a shortage of workers in the future. The reason for these dropouts is usually because students just don’t fit in at school.  What’s even more shocking is that a large number of these dropouts have parents who don’t even care that their child dropped out.  What can we do to change this?

 

Furthermore, there have been increasing amounts of school shootings.  This reflects on the school and the teachers’ personal responsibilities for the students and their behavior.   Many of these individuals who turn guns on their fellow classmates are usually from middle class families.  As the first school shooting appeared in the media, there was hope that nothing like it would happen again.  Now, almost every month we see some sort of school violence in the media.  It is almost as if it is some kind of sick increasing trend.  Why?

 

On the other hand, it is not as if there has not been any effort to reduce or even stop these problems.  In order to reduce school shootings, there has been more censoring in the media and increased security in schools.  I believe that these efforts are well worth it and may help out some, but do they change the student’s attitude? In my high school, our English teacher sets up shadowing and mentoring for each student.  This gives the student a chance to experience the real world.  They can interact with real people, rather than to just read facts from a book.  If more schools took the time to set up shadowing and mentoring for their students, the dropout rate would decrease.  Another effort to reduce problems with youth involves programs to enforce the legal drinking age.  The zero tolerance law keeps many young drivers from drinking, or going out on the roads after a few drinks.  This law helps teens to realize they could lose their “key to freedom”, their driver’s license.

 

If the teachers or parents cannot be responsible for the actions of our youth today, then other individuals in the community need to step in and help out.  In my own community, I can see efforts taking place to try to improve the quality of life.  At my church, every Wednesday they have a group of volunteers who gather and prepare an afternoon of fun for children after school.  These volunteers go to the grade school, gather up the children, and drive them over to the church.  This provides the children with the attention they need.  They read, sing, and play games.  This program gives the children a healthy environment to go to after school rather than an empty house.

 

In addition to these programs that are taking place, there are some other things I believe we could do to try to reduce, or even solve these problems.  Before a child is old enough to attend school, parents should stay at home with their children.  Once these children are in school there are many things we could do to help them.  For adolescents with alcohol and drug abuse problems, schools could offer anonymous support groups.  This would give students someone to talk to and relate with about their problem.  By listening to their peers talk they may realize how serious their problem is and that they are not alone.

Furthermore, schools could offer a wider variety of after school activities.  If they had activities available for all types of students, not just the ones in sports, adolescents would have better things to do than do drugs and drink.   This would also keep a lot of teens out of trouble.  Another area schools could work on is reducing the student to faculty ratio.  If there were more teachers, there would be more one on one time with the student.  This would improve student- teacher relationships and cause a decrease in dropouts an school shootings.  

           

Personal responsibility has a huge impact on improving the quality of life today.  The way we choose to live our lives affects everything, so we should focus the way we live on improving society.  If we focus our help on the younger generation, the quality of life will continue to improve for the future.

 

Questions-Personal Responsibility

 

A1-   People in society today in the USA do not invest time into their marriages.  Manus residents do not seem to invest time into their marriages either.  They seem to center their marriages on money and not anything else.  The Manus are canny about backing a man who has been divorced, just as society in the USA are not very likely to go after people who have been divorced because they cannot be trusted to stay in a marriage.  If they gave up on their first marriage what’s to say they won’t do it again.  People seem to rush into marriage for all the wrong reasons, which is why divorce is so common.

 

A2-

A.) 2years, 1^st marriage, 10 years, 2^nd marriage- A happy relationship must have love

            and trust.

B.) 3 years, 1^st marriage- trust and communication

C.) 5 years, 1^st marriage- must be able to spent time with each other

D.) 9 years, 1^st marriage- being honest with each other

E.) 6 years, 1^st marriage- helping each other out with tough times

F.) 4 years, 1^st marriage, 5years 2^nd marriage- love and patience

G.) 9 years, 1^st marriage- not rushing into marriage

      H.) 20 years, 1^st marriage- patience and a lot of communication

 I.) 3 months, 1^st marriage- get to know each other before getting married

        J.) 9 months, 1^st marriage- communication and planning

 

A3- Our collective goal should be to dematerialize society without reducing the quality of life.

 

A4-I think a worthy goal for our community would be to clean up.  The roads and ditches are filled with trash people have littered.  Also, being so close to the river this trash is dangerous for the animals in the river. We could have volunteer groups to clean up this trash.

 

A6-I think this doll designed for lonely children is a complete joke.  A doll is not going to provide the human connection that these children need.  A doll cannot replace a mother’s love. 

 

A7-We distinguish ourselves in the United States.  That notion of democracy, going on with individualism and social fluidity, is deeply ingrained in our culture; lawyers help protect us from the danger of tyranny of the majority.  The United States is so diverse it cannot live without lawyers.  We are heterogeneous.  This brings more conflict and less agreement about social customs.  Lawyers help to mediate diversity of custom.  Our society is wealthy; therefore, we often turn to collective luxuries.  In order to have these collective luxuries people often turn to the law to solve these problems.  In a society with large-scale organizations, with large-scale work forces, and large-scale transactions, lawyers help to achieve what the economists call economies of scale. 

Punitive damages seem to be the most logical way to change bad practices.  This way the company realizes what they have done wrong by absorbing the cost of the activity.

 

A8-It is likely that a large number of these retirees will start up their own businesses.  They may hire other retirees to work for them thus, establishing ‘gray business’ made up of older workers.  They Generation X’ers will settle down and have babies causing another baby boom.  By 2020, there will be roughly one individual over 65 for every four working-age adults.  Some companies may offer “elder care” facilities. Increased productivity and lower absenteeism would offset the cost of these facilities. 

 

A9-I believe it will not make much of an impact.  The poor may be good for a new labor pool, but the poor need training.   The president’s trail is well worn.  Many other presidents have tried to succeed in reducing poverty and did not.  These new plans may take a long time to make a difference. 

 

A10-Truett Cathy and Tom Lewis both have a very strong faith, a desire to help children, and perseverance to succeed.