Taking Responsibility

by Elizabeth

Young people of today may be more sophisticated than we of an older generation were but they are still dependent and going to school until the ages of 16 to 18.

Other cultures have initiation ceremonies celebrating youngsters becoming adults. We do not have that, developing into adulthood is slower and more gradual.

Our initiations consist of getting a licence to drive a vehicle, getting a part time job after school hours and during holidays and earning one?s own money to spend how they wish on what they want to buy and feel most important.

There is the taking on of gradual responsibility for making decisions regarding one's actions. There is gradual socialisation away from one's family, mixing with other people and learning from them.

Working in that part time job involves making a bargain with an employer, being given designated tasks, doing whatever work that he or she asks them to do. It might be cleaning work, tidying up and washing dishes in a café, then being allowed to serve customers and handle money.

It is easy to argue with members of your family and not want to do any work for them, but when you go out and work for a stranger, you learn to do what they ask of you as they are paying you.

You are expected to behave like an adult, and you are treated like one. You learn to deal with difficult people and not let it get to you, if they have done all they can to provoke you.

In other terms the experience you gain from dealing with the public can set you up well when you go on to tertiary study and then into the career of your dreams. School, polytechnics and universities cannot teach you how to deal with the public.

You will learn other interaction with the people you now associate with away from your family. Those will be social issues such as finding out your own strengths and weaknesses in your dealings with your contemporaries and maybe the other adults you encounter such as your flatmates, your land lord and the companies you pay your electricity, phone and internet bills to.

You may feel a sense of freedom when you leave home but you soon learn that you still have to consider other people around you. Unfortunately these lessons often come hard when you are told that you are not allowed to play loud music, block access or inconvenience your neighbours, and that they likewise have to show you consideration.

Sadly there are people in our communities now who have never learned responsibility for theirs or other people?s lives. They end up as misfits, often in prison, after failing to learn at school or to respect authority.

So often parents have been to blame as they have failed themselves to learn life skills and have nothing to pass on to their children.