Taking responsibility - Mai mee rapitchorp!

How many teachers have really thought about their responsibility as a teacher in a classroom and the effect their teaching can have on future generations of people - lawyers, doctors, teachers?

If I've learned anything on this planet after 46 years it's this: nobody seems to take responsibility for their actions any more. I know- I sound like an old man, like one of those old fisherman who bemoans the world he now lives in and wishes it were like it was when he was a child. "It weren't like that in my day you know!"But I can remember being told that that was part of being a good citizen e.g. that you took responsibility when you stuffed up, when you made a pig's ear of something, whether intentional or not, and stood up and said "mea culpa".

In those days, there was a much more keenly felt sense of justice and fair play and a clear moral compass for guidance where even politicians routinely resigned when there was only a whiff of a scandal. Nowadays, you can't even get convicted criminal politicians to serve their time in prison, so if our leaders won't show us the way, what hope is there for the rest of the populace?

OK, I admit that Thailand is not exactly well-known for having its citizens go out of their way to shoulder the burden of blame when the proverbial brown stuff hits the fan, but I do think us westerners could show them a thing or two about how to admit when you're wrong and observe how this can be a catalyst for change when it happens, instead of pretending the problem never existed in the first place and not ever discussing it.

When it all goes wrong

How many teachers are willing to admit that they have never really sat down and thought about the impact their teaching has had on their charges and what responsibility, if any, they have to those students' futures? How what they teach, and the ways they teach it, have a direct impact on those same students? And what happens when it all ends up in disaster? When something that the student learned in the classroom causes a problem in later life, or just as significant, what they didn't learn and perhaps should have?

The idea that we as teachers can just breeze in and out of students' lives and not have any lasting impact is surely quite mistaken. As teachers, we are often directly responsible for shaping the minds of our students, their attitudes, encouraging them in ways that don't always have anything directly to do with a particular curriculum, the ways teachers teach students not just how to express themselves in new and interesting ways, but also in how to behave in certain situations and, most importantly, to know the difference between right and wrong.

We are all so busy these days that we scarcely have time for ourselves any more so it's not surprising when we hear of more vocational college students fighting in rival gangs and where an innocent nine-year old boy is shot in the face and neck and killed on his way to school. These students seem bereft of any moral guidelines and behave like thugs with complete impunity. What too of the responsibilities of the teachers of those boys to prevent them from attacking each other with guns and knives? Or even the responsibilities of their parents? There seems to be an ethical vacuum in these people's lives and goes partly some way to explaining their completely callous acts this week.

Who's responsible?

I got to thinking about this while researching an article about a German doctor Dr. Ubani with poor English language skills who accidentally administered an overdose of a painkiller to a patient, David Gray, 70, while working for a health trust in the UK last year. There was so much finger-pointing but nobody wanted to accept responsibility, not the doctor, not the Primary Care Trust (PCT) that employed the doctor, not the organization that controls foreign doctors working in the UK.

I mention this also because it was the first time I had come across a possible link between the results of poor language classroom study and its possible consequences. Here was a highly respected overseas doctor with twenty two years experience who had not been able to communicate well with a patient to establish his problems and made a critical mistake. Does it matter that the doctor was of Nigerian descent, a native speaking German forced to speak English in a country where he'd only had three hours sleep upon arrival, and where he was also having to drive his car on the opposite side of the road for the first time ever in an unfamiliar environment? Probably, but the net result is the same - someone is now dead.

Mea culpa?

I started to wonder if I as a teacher have ever been so poor in the classroom over a sustained period of time that I could have unleashed unto the world a few Dr. Ubanis of my own who were plying their trade with all the skill and aplomb of a deep sea diver in full metal diving bell suit! I've had a few dud students over the years as has every teacher. I define "dud" as a student not unlike an unspent cartridge - you know there's something there but you can't get it to ignite, can't quite get a spark going in the eyes of that student; can't seem to get them into a good learning pattern or help them develop some aspect of themselves either educationally or any other way. We've all experienced such students in our classrooms, so it isn't hard to imagine.

When I was a teacher in Saudia Arabia for the first time, I was teaching Saudi Air Force cadets Aviation English, and I can tell you that I had quite a few duds there. To give you a simple image, "the lights were on the runway, but there was no planes taxiing because the pilot was out to lunch". These cadets were being groomed for the workshops where the planes were serviced. I'm talking about million pound aircraft like the Harrier jump jet, the Hawk, the F-15 and others. I have often wondered how many of them mistakenly used wrong tools to install or repair old or new equipment? Perhaps there's aircraft in service now with ill-fitting bolts, cranky and loose wheel bearings, palm oil being used for lubrication instead of aviation oil?

Could I be responsible for that in some way? Abdullah and Achmed are working on a 10 million US $ jet. Abdullah: "Is it a 9-mm capstan screw?" Achmed: "No, it's a 12-mm staple." Abdullah: "Never mind, stick it in. The plane will fly. Inchallah!"
I've taught doctors and business managers too, and been responsible for teaching many other skilled and unskilled people. If I haven't done a good job in the classroom, could I have endangered the lives of some doctor's future patients or, like the butterfly and Tornado example used in Chaos Theory (Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas), could I be a link in the chain of events that brings about an end that is not would I would have liked or intended in any way?

I guess we can only thank god that we are not often asked to take responsibility for our actions because, if we ever became aware that in some small token-like way, we were part of a series of processes that ended in calamity, then it would become increasingly difficult to ever step into a classroom again. That said, we are more than just robots with marker pens, and it never does any harm to remember that what we bring to the classroom can and maybe does leave a lasting impression on all our students.

Tom Tuohy is a teacher and writer. He has written for a number of newspapers, magazines and websites including: The Guardian Weekly, the EL Gazette, jobs.ac.uk, The Bangkok Post, and UniversityWorldNews.com You can access Tom's blog here.