Teaching our students the meaning of responsibility Monday, 03 May 2010 20:05

A team of Americans consisting of high school students and their supervisors fly to Africa with a mission to build a school in one of the poorest villages for other students just like them. We ask ourselves, “Where does this camaraderie come from? Why don’t they just adopt a school and donate American dollars to cheap African labour to undertake building it? Why depend on adolescent students with limited experience and physical power to undertake this endeavour?”

The answer lies in the desire to teach these young students great lessons. Among them is utilizing their free time and summer holidays in useful activities, as well as learning to depend on themselves, develop faith in their capabilities, and contributing to a humanitarian effort. Another valuable lesson is breaking racial, cultural, and environmental boundaries between students of the world; their humanity uniting them. Several lessons are absorbed by the students selected to build the school in the African village. And there are several lessons awaiting our students whose numbers are amongst the thousands. They face long, hot, vacant summers, which are filled with rebellion out of boredom. Adolescents differ from adults and the elderly. Each have their interests, concerns, and useful or destructive activities in which they spend their free time. Adolescents form the majority of the population, and are considered to be easily molded, strong-willed, energetic, and vibrant.

Consider if this youthful energy were guided toward community service by the Supreme Education Council in co-ordination with ministries and other state bodies. They are not required to build schools but to maintain them. Not necessarily to plant gardens but to contribute to cultivating them; as this serves a constant reminder to young people that they contributed to a natural life, and created something beautiful out of it. They are not asked to pave streets but perhaps to restore the potholes consuming them, surrounding shopping malls, ministries, clinics, schools, amongst other places, which people are forced to drive into throughout their everyday routines.

We want a truly green country! In our cities and neighbourhoods there are vast areas of land of all sizes overcome with sand, rocks, sediment, and even mud in between houses and streets. These areas are breeding grounds for dust and contamination that spread during the many wind storms, causing harm to pedestrians and cars, especially when in contact with rain or any type of water. During sand storms, there are layers of thin particles that fly into the atmosphere, obstructing vision. No one escapes the harm of these sands, especially not the laborers, whose eyes and skin are exposed to these conditions throughout the entire year. In addition, homes are harmed by these storms, and sand enters through windows and doors.

There are also vast spaces of empty land used by cars as parking, or are driven through as shortcuts in high-traffic, congested areas. For example, the land next to the Ministry of Municipality on Al-Sadd St., which is used as parking despite how dangerous the unconstructed land is, because people have nowhere else to park. The holiday season is coming up within the next few months, and now is the appropriate time to develop community service programs for young people in middle and high school. These programs will help the youth perform national service to beautify the capital and lessen the brunt of desertification and the environmental burden of sand storms.

Encouraging schoolchildren to take on gardening and cultivation will contribute to their creativity and sense of community and environmentalism.

The efforts of young people should be combined with ministerial resources and powers to pave and reconstruct deserted or poorly landscaped areas. Ministries may contribute heavier manpower to construct high-quality pavement, and young people may contribute to less power-intensive tasks. This will teach young people to take pride in their country, and to protect the resources that they have contributed to building.

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