Lead SA in partnership with the Department of Education and the national Interfaith Movement on Wednesday launched a program teaching school children the Bill of Responsibilities at Glendale High School in Mitchells Plain.
“The Bill seeks to inculcate the values of rights and responsibilities among schoolchildren and is important for building the character and deterring teenage pregnancies and the use and abuse of alcohol and drugs.” Amber Drake said.
Amber Drake is one of Lead SA’s employers working on the program. Lead SA is a Primedia Broadcasting initiative, supported by Independent Newspapers, that aims to highlight the achievements of the nation and celebrate the efforts of ordinary South Africans who continually seek to do the right thing for themselves, for their families and for their country.
The department has developed a teachers’ guide that provides practical ways for schools to promote the rights and responsibilities of children and shows how a rights and responsibilities culture can be built into school and classroom management. The Bill of Responsibilities contains the buildings blocks. It shows us how to do the right thing and achieves this by outlining the responsibilities that correspond to each of the rights we are afforded in our Constitution.
They will be highlighting specific rights and responsibilities each month, this includes issues such as “the right to education, with the corresponding responsibility to attend school regularly, to learn and to work hard; co-operate respectfully with teachers and fellow-learners; and to adhere to rules and the code of conduct of the school. Also, how to be a “good and loyal South African citizen” by obeying the laws of our country and contributing in every possible way to make South Africa a greater country.
They believe that by teaching this to schoolchildren they will build up morals in the children empowering them to say no to drugs and sex and in that way deterring the amount of children getting involved with drugs and having unexpected pregnancies.
“This campaign aims to ensure that all schools, teachers and learners engage with the issues of what it means to be a responsible citizen in order to build and strengthen a culture of human rights and responsibilities in our schools in which all learners learn and all teachers teach,” the principle of Glendale High School said.
At first the children mocked the program saying that life is too good to listen to old people preaching to them which caused meant they approached the program mockingly but some of them are excited for the program, feeling that they have already been enlightened by the program and that they have already seen their responsibility in order to keep their rights.
“I know I have rights, have known that for all my life but I did not realize that I also have a responsibility towards this right,” a learner at Glendale High said.
Another learner’s reaction was: “I know all the stuff they told us today. This is just a waste of our class time. They should go talk to the gangsters out in the streets and not to us.”
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