TEACHERS' SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Ronnall Castro Quintero 
hegelarx@hotmail.com
Publicado en Capital Letter No. 5
Mayo de 2004


According to the Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Responsibility means 'being responsible to a person or for a thing, and also 'the capacity for rational conduct'1.


Taking into account these definitions we could say that teachers' social responsibility is higher than other professionals' responsibility. Of course, all of us are involved and integrated in social situations all the time, but teachers' interaction differs in quality and quantity from other people's interactions. For example, if an engineer is in charge of building or repairing a bridge, the responsibility for the possible damages on it during or after its construction can be assumed by another engineer; it means that another person can solve the problem in a relatively short period of time.


The problem becomes more complex when our actions are not intended to transform non¬living things but human beings. A human being is both 'Unity' and 'Heterogeneity' at the same time, and he/she is evolving permanently2. So, as teachers, we are expected to be human beings that respond to society in a rational way in order to transform it, always looking for the progress of humanity. We must be aware of the necessity of recognizing ourselves in the students and their needs. This recognition makes the difference in quality between teachers and other professionals.


To talk about quantity demands to bear in mind the quality of relations among teachers, students, and the society. The bridge built by the engineer is there, everybody uses it, but nobody realizes it is there. However, when a teacher says something in a classroom, he/she is not influencing only twenty or twenty-five students since they are related, at least, to four or more people; besides, they may become parents. It means that we are influencing directly twenty people, and indirectly, perhaps more than one hundred. 


This influence can help students to overcome all their weaknesses, or can worsen them. Unfortunately, the effects of the bad influence touch all the members of a society, and they cannot be surpassed in a short period of time. On the other hand, if a teacher wants to relieve this problem, he/she must be brave and patient because the process could last a long time. Due to this influence and its intricacies, RESPONSIBILITY must be the central category in our lives, but especially in our living classroom'.


1  Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Oxford Publishing.
2  CASTILLA DEL PINO, C. Dialéctica de la Persona, Dialéctica de la Situación. Ediciones Península. Barcelona. 1.975