Responsibility, can it be taught to the students?

Responsibility is just a concept that can't be taught as a subject. As values, responsibility is something you learn by watching actions in others and understanding that you have to do something, and you can't go away from it, because you know you are the only one who can do it.

Let's see how can we learn to be responsible:

1. By punishment: I am punished for not doing something, so I learn that if I don't do what I am supposed to do I will receive something negative in exchange.
2. By imitation: I see what other people are doing. And when I see that other people are being succesful and having all they want, then I want to copy that.
3. By the experience: After many times of doing the right things, and getting good benefits, then I just continue being responsible and getting even better things.
4. By inner inspiration: Something tells me that I have to be responsible and I must do things because I am here in this planet, for a reason, and that reason is to do my job.

Probably, if you are lazy, you will learn by punishment. If you are clever, you will learn by imitation. If you have lived long, then by experience. But the best way to learn how to be responsible is by inner inspiration, because it gets a different payment. Nobody told you what to do, it was you only who knew what to do, you did it. That is the moment when you feel you are growing up.

Now, the key question is... how my students can learn to be responsible?

The answer is simple, it must be secuencial, it must starts by punishment. It can sound strong, but this comes when we are so young, with the family. But when the family is not doing its part, then this step comes at the school which brings lots of problems.

Our role as teachers must be moving our students through these 4 levels, as a transition, in a way that our students don't feel that being responsible is something that is against them.