As we as Esperanza educators do all we can to respond to the rights our scholars have to be educated it is important that we also teach them that with rights come duties. Much of the 20th Century was devoted to the rights of others. Maybe this 21st Century could become the century of duties--civic duties, human duties, fiduciary duties, environmental duties, duties to future generations, etc.
Duty means to put other people ahead of one's own self-interests. Our minds stretch the farthest when they are pure and actively concerned about the welfare of others. To help our Esperanza scholars learn about duties, we will involve them in service learning and social action activities that are connected with what they are learning, including civics. Involvement in these type of activities will develop character and thus complement our Esperanza character education program.
NOTE: Some of the ideas in this posting come from the thoughts of Dr. John W. Welch in his acceptance speech for the 2011 BYU Maeser Award that he received in May 2011.
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