During my secondary school days, before I was able to choose between are and science which I wanted to do, different debate topics were thrown to my class. Being the class representative back then, I could not get an excuse to not participate because they made me the leader of every group I joined.
Every Friday after afternoon lessons, we'll gather in the auditorium to present our diverse topics with me being the first to present. Sometimes, my class even debate against other senior classes. My teachers said they were preparing us for public speaking (which sounds nice) but I grew up to be someone that prefers well debated and factually proven logic to random conversations.
We debated on topics like teachers are better than farmers, education is better than wealth and many more topics that I can't even remember at the moment. However, the only notion I regret supporting is that which states that "education is better than wealth."
I would not bother to debate on these topics today because I have come to understand that no profession is better than the other. Each profession play a very significant role to ensure the growth and development of a given state, thus, the reason for all professionals of diverse fields to mutual respect for each other.
Teachers and parents have similar responsibilities which is to teach and breed the leaders of tomorrow, the kids. However, one question many people ask is - does the role of teachers end in school? Many people tend to ask this question. Where does the role of a teacher ends? Does it end in school where they teach 1 +1 equals 2 or does the role of teachers extend to outside school environment?
Subjectively, I think both parents and teachers have a role in the growth and development of a child. When talking about the agents of socialization, the home is first, followed by school then peer groups.
I don't really think that the duty of a teacher totally continues outside school when the kid is not in the custody of the teacher. I think the teachers duty ends in school. However, this does not stop the teacher from correcting the school child outside of school if they see the kid doing something wrong.
Where I'm from, there is an adage that say that the responsibility of training a child does not fall only on the shoulders of the child's parents. However, it extents to the shoulders of the community because when that child grows to become good or bad, the community at large will be affected either positively or negatively.
So, with this foundation stated above, I don't really think the responsibility of a teacher towards teaching the child stops at school. It continues even after school. However, if the responsibility level on teachers in school is 10%, outside school it reduces to about 2% because the child's parents are there to continue from where the teacher stopped.
Thank you for reading.
All images are mine.