Teach children personal responsibility, not how to assign blame

This letter is in response to the April 20 letter titled "Parent Voices Concern About Security at High School" (Suburban, April 20).

First of all, our teachers' primary responsibility is to educate our children to help them become useful and productive members of our society, not to protect students' personal belongings. Secondly, our teachers' responsibility between split periods is to ensure the safety of our children and ensure they get to classes on time.

The "stories" about students' personal electronics not being allowed in school are actually school policy. Calculators are allowed and do serve an educational benefit to the students.

How can you expect our children to learn in an environment where parents allow their children to bring such distractions as iPods and cell phones to school? What educational purpose do these items provide? Oh, the kids only use them in lunch and after school - right.

What did we do before cell phones? I told my parents that practice was over at 6 p.m., and that's when they came to pick me up.

Consider this possibility. Did we ever think that our children might be responsible for their own belongings? Whatever happened to parents holding their children responsible? That's how we teach them respect for their own and other people's property. The parents buy the child the iPod, but it's the child's responsibility to keep track of it. If the child loses it, the parents do not buy a new one.

It's a hard but simple lesson to teach. Unfortunately, it is not the lesson we are teaching our children. We want our children to act like young adults, but we do not hold them to the consequences that adults often face.

Where does it end? When do we stop blaming other people for bad things that happen? Sometimes it's just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bad things can happen to good people, with no blame to be placed.

Jackie Balewitz

Sayreville