Di chi è la colpa? Or, whose fault is it anyway?

By: Megan Yarnall
OIEE Contributor

I had been warned. Many times. I knew that taking a teaching assignment in Italy wouldn’t
be easy. The students have a reputation for being disrespectful, disinterested, and rude.
And in most of my classes, it seems they live up to this every day. Some of the teachers
complain; others just laugh about it, but all of them have one thing in common: they agree
that the students can often be difficult and that they just don’t care. They want to finish
school and get out.

With recent (and regular) controversy over education in America, and the discourse about
how to improve teacher training, I began to do some thinking myself.

“Whose fault is it that these students are not interested?” I ask myself this question in the
classroom nearly every day. In Italy, after school, parents, teachers and students from each
class meet every so often for a meeting called “consigli di classi” – class advising. Parents,
teachers and students can discuss class issues together in a constructive environment. Yet
still, students remain uninterested. Is it the students? Is it their fault that they can’t sit still
and can’t appreciate about English idioms? Or is it the teachers? Are they not strict enough?
Do they not hold the students’ attention? Or finally, is it the parents? Do they not enforce
homework habits or good behavior and remind their children of the importance of school?

There may be no real way to get to the bottom of this. What I have noticed, however, is that
once a student has cemented their habits into a way of life, they remain that way for quite
some time, if not forever, waiting out high school until the final end. So, I’ve concluded,
the beginning is critical. If students don’t pick up good habits right away, they can still find
them later, but it will be a lot more difficult (as with any habit, right?).

I then considered the fact that many students love to ask, “Why do I need to know this?
Why is this important?” I worry that some of them truly don’t understand why it is so
important for them to be at school. And as I’ve been worrying about this since I arrived
here, I have slowly realized: my job, as I attempt to teach the English language day after
day, is to, first and foremost, teach them the importance of being at school, of paying
attention, and teaching them the value of education. If they value this education, they will
come to have a respect for it as well, and they will study and learn what I am trying to teach
them.

While it is partly the responsibility of the parents (they are caretakers of their kids after
all), the factor of teaching respect, the importance, and excitement of education is on
the shoulders of the teachers, because they are the ones at the school, they have made
education a career, and the students associate teachers with learning and parents with
living.

After the motivation and excitement, and the understanding of why education is important,
students will learn because they want to learn, because they understand the importance,
and not just because it is an expectation. Expectations are not enough because some
students don’t care about them and some students will go against them just to be defiant.

The answer to this question, like the answer to most questions, is just not crystal clear. Like
the world, it’s not black and white. Instead, it’s gray. It’s a spectrum of fault. The only “bad”
teachers are those who don’t encourage excitement and show why education is important,
and the only “bad” students are those who are not excited. It’s everyone’s fault. Parents,
teachers, and students all need to be involved. How to get students excited and keep them
engaged? That, of course, is a question for another day.

Megan Yarnall recently graduated from Dickinson College with a BA in English. She also
studied creative writing and Italian and currently writes freelance articles for Demand
Studios and blogs for www.travdy.com. She also continues writing both fiction and nonfiction,
and working on photography. Her photos can be found at www.meganyarnall.wordpress.com
and her writing can be found at www.megtaylor.wordpress.com.