The Pedagogy of Excuses v. the Pedagogy
of Responsibility can be summed up best by the following
litany:
It is not the student's parents,
it is poor teaching.
It's is not the students parents’ unemployment,
it is poor teaching.
It is not the student's parents’ educational
level, it is poor teaching.
It is not the student's poverty, it is poor teaching.
It is not the student's personal hygiene, it is
poor teaching.
It is not the student's socio-economic class, it
is poor teaching
It is not the student's race, it is poor teaching.
It is not the student's ethnicity, it is poor teaching.
It is not the student's disability, it is poor teaching.
It is not the student's intellectual capacity, it
is poor teaching.
It is not the student's character, it is poor teaching.
It is not the student's attitude, it is poor teaching.
It is not the student’s family, cultural,
or religious values, it is poor teaching.
It is not the teacher's salaries, it is poor teaching.
It is not the teacher's benefits, it is poor teaching.
It is not access to copy machines, it is poor teaching.
To the teacher who practices the Pedagogy of Excuses,
there is always another reason for the child's inability
to learn. This pedagogical philosophy dominates
all strata of America's educational system. The
idea that it is their own teaching disabilities
and not the student’s learning disabilities,
is unconscionable to the vast majority of teachers
in the field today. These teachers can find their
way through the woods, a daily newspaper, or the
Internet, yet cannot recognize their own deficiencies
in the faces in the mirror of why schools fail.
The Pedagogy of Responsibility begins with the
new teacher’s total commitment to:
No Excuses! It's Me Alone! I,
alone, can make a difference. I alone can change
one student at a time, one day at a time, one classroom
at a time.
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