June 15, 2010

• Educating a child, whose responsibility?

  Opinion
  
  

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  Educating the child is everyone's responsibility.

  This is what I believe in.

  The child's education do not only rest on the family or the parents per se, or just the school, or the church. A child's education also rests on the shoulders of the people in the child's immediate community, on the people in the streets, on the people who are safely tucked in the cubicles of their high-rise offices, on government, on the person across the globe, on everybody's shoulder.

  Each and everyone of us is responsible for the child's education, wherever part of the world that child is.

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  I remember a friend who told me one time that if we give a child some false information, it would not take long for that false information to become a truth in the eyes of the child and the rest of the community.

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  Example. If we saw a child in the park and we tell that child that hotdogs are made of dog meat, tendency is that the child would tell other children about this new information that he gathered, and that other child would tell another, and so on and so forth.

  One misinformation fed by a passerby can become the truth if it is not corrected.

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  The responsibility of educating a child does not only rest on the shoulder of the schools, on the parents, on the church, it falls on everybody's shoulder. So, why would sex education be different? Why would we limit this to the parents, who, in all reality, is afraid to talk about sex with their children? Why would we not allow schools to come up with a scientific and practical way of teaching children about their bodies, about responsibility, about the sacredness of sex, about parenthood?

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  I learned about sex from my friends, who were just as misinformed on the subject as I was.

  The few information that we had encouraged us to explore, to be promiscuous, so to speak. What if, in this state of misinformed promiscuity we decided to become more adventurous? Wouldn't there be the danger of catching STDs at such an early age?

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  I once saw a documentary on children who ate soap to rid of whatever STD they caught while trying to satisfy their curiosity about their bodies. They were misinformed.

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  Educating the child does not mean that we have to confine their learning to what we believe is moral. It is also our responsibility to teach children how to live a fulfilled life, and that includes knowing how to take care of their bodies. Of course, there is always a proper way and a proper venue when and where these sensitive topics can be introduced to children. And there is also a proper time.

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  Bottomline is, educating a child is everyone's responsibility, and not just of the parents, the school, or the church.

  • 9:53 pm
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