Personal responsibility

Well, here I am again! I have played with the set-up, I have made my first posting, and I am trying to think where I can go today.
As I was thinking about the computerized world we live in, and during a round of frantic grading, my mind was drawn to some conversations I have had with colleagues and parents over the last few years. I may have forgotten to mention, I am a teacher. I have been in the public school for 10 of the last 15 years. I started teaching German in American Fork, Utah. I love the German language and culture, and I really do enjoy sharing that love with my students. I taught in Utah for 7 years. I moved to Arkansas, and walked away from teaching for a while. (Another long story for another time.)
I took a 5+ year break when several things lined up to create a life change. One of them is the most significant thing I want to mention today. That is responsibilty.
I had reached a point in those years that the internal politics in school, and the atmosphere and attitude outside of school were making the teaching less enjoyable. Teachers around the country are scrambling to keep up with an ever growing volume of new regulations and requirements. We are all required to keep ourselves on the cutting edge of our profession. This is a good thing. We are falling behind as a nation, when compared with the success of other nations' students. But I have to say that we can require our teachers to all earn Doctoral degrees in their respective fields, and it will change very little in our success rankings, until we change some major things in our society.
We as a country have fallen into an ever-present attitude of "it's not my fault, it's not my responsibility". Just look around you for evidence of this. We injure ourselves doing something completely stupid, and we want to blame anyone but ourselves. We run through the house with scissors, fall and get stabbed, and we want to blame the manufacturer, because they didn't make the label big enough that said, "Hey stupid, don't run with scissors, you might get stabbed if you fall!!" We see report after report of criminals who get injured committing their crimes, and they succeed in suing the homeowner who is now double victim of the crime. We allow our students to get by with the least effort possible, because we are uncomfortable holding back students who haven't mastered the curriculum. Teachers can only do so much here, withour direct parental involvment.
We answer to the lowest common denominator in our schools, and wonder why we don't seem to be achieving more. ????????
We have tried for so many years to make everyone equal, that we are slowly succeeding in making everyone mediocre. When this comment makes you uncomfortable, consider this: Was your first response to wonder what the Government can do to fix this? What the educational system should do to fix it? How our teachers should change this system?
Then you are not alone. If there is a problem, but it is not our fault, it is not up to us to solve it, right? As evidenced by our growing Federal and state level programs to make everyone equal; financially, educationally, socially, etc., we have many who would like everything to be the Big Brother's responsibility.
The only way we can change this in our society, is for parents, teachers, preachers, mentors, friends, family, et al to recreate a worldview where we each have to make our own way, and we believe anything is possible. Hard work and perseverance will be rewarded with a feeling of accomplishment, and that is more important than "rewards", but the rewards will also be there.
Let's bring this country back to it's powerful roots! We can accomplish anything we set our minds to, but not if we expect someone else (particularly government) to get it done for us.

THAT'S THE CHANGE WE NEED!!