What ARE they teaching them in those schools, anyway?

A few weeks ago at Youth Group, I made some kind of offhand comment about The Little Red Hen. (I think it was related to the fact that one of the older boys was working to prepare the game for the rest of the kids, while they just stood around like lunks and didn't help).

I was met, by and large, by incomprehension.

Do kids really NOT know the story of the Little Red Hen? I heard it all the time growing up.

In a nutshell (to review, or if you're one of the generation who never heard it): Little Red Hen (hereafter LRH) decides it's time to make some bread. So she realizes she has to plant wheat. She asks her barnyard friends for help...they all have some excuse. "So I'll do it myself" said the LRH.

Then, she has to harvest and thresh the wheat. And no one would help her. So she does it herself. And take it to the mill. Again, no one would help her. So she does it herself. Then, she had to bake the bread.

Again, no help.

(So what happens, children? Repeat after me: SHE DOES IT HERSELF.)

But let that bread come out of the oven, let the LRH comment that it's time to EAT the bread....and suddenly all those mooching animals are there, wanting a slice. Which they didn't help to produce one bit.

And while I suppose you could take a more political view of the whole thing, I tend to look at it more personally.

My friends, I AM the Little Red Hen. I have actually grumbled, "I will do it MYSELF" under my breath in a few instances lately, when someone who agreed to do something poops out, or when I ask someone for help and they suddenly realize they are "too busy."

I'm the one who does the volunteer work that the Youth Group Kids are supposed to do, but they suddenly "have to do" something that Saturday morning. I'm the one who will be showing up to man the fund-raising yard sale EVEN THOUGH I observed I will have to bring my grading and teaching prep with me to work on during the slack times. I am the one who picks stuff up, even after pointing it out to the people who dropped it. I'm the one who sticks around extra long on campus in case people who haven't come in to speak to me about their research paper well before it's due decide they NEED HELP NOW the day before it's due.

Frankly - and I realize this is sending totally the wrong message - sometimes it is easier to just DO the job you asked the pre-teen or young teen kid to do fifteen times and they haven't done yet. While it's true that they have "won" and that they have learned that intransigence wears you down to the point where they don't have to do it, still, it is FRUSTRATING AS ALL GET OUT to ask someone (someone you are technically in a position of authority over) to do something 20 times and have it still go undone. (And I can't leave some stuff undone. I can't leave empty pop cans out on the tables we share with several other groups. I'd be the one to get in trouble.)

And it's the same way with some college students. I have a majority of people who, upon having given an open-ended assignment, run with it - they ask minimal guidance, and then they go. They figure out what needs to be done. They plan their time well. They work mostly independently but do come for help when it's really needed. In other words: they're adults.

I teach a fairly advanced-level analysis class where the students are expected to collect data and analyze that data. Eighty percent of the class is doing great - they're working through whatever problems they encounter, they're learning as they go along, they're figuring stuff out and then helping other people figure out what they need.

But the remaining 20% just shut down. They whine. They say they don't know what they're "supposed" to do (funny, all of the rest of your colleagues figured it out, and you have this thing called a "syll-a-bus" that explains it). They slack off. They take the phrase "Use this class period to work independently on your project" as an opportunity to (a) complain they don't have anything, (b) harass the people who are working, and (c) leave the class early - with nothing done.

I've already warned my co-teacher that if these individuals come back in mid-November, crying poor about how their projects aren't working out and they NEED us to help them RIGHT THEN, I am not giving any help. I am tired of this. I am tired of other people's failures to plan leading to their perception that it is a crisis for me.

Because I work hard. I work hard in teaching - I do extra office hours, I make myself available to assist people. I work hard on the weekends at my volunteer gigs, even when there aren't many other folks there.

I do a lot of the scut work, the dirty work, the crap jobs, the hard labor. And I don't hate it. I actually enjoy cutting brush and stacking it and picking up trash and doing all that kind of good stuff. I just mind that it seems like a lot of people can make excuses for why they NEVER help, and it seems like it's always the same 8 or 10 people who are otherwise really, really busy in their lives that do it.

I really do not mind hard work, provided that one type of hard work is not pulling me from something else I must then finish on my limited "free time." Because few things suck harder than coming home after a long day working outdoors just to realize you've got 20 student research papers to grade.

But by and large, I do not mind the work.

What I do mind? Whenever there's something good, people flock to it. I can guarantee I will receive plenty suggestions on how we "should" spend the proceeds of the garage sale.

I'm doubly sensitive to this because we're sharing the work (and splitting the proceeds) with the day care that works out of the church basement. And I DO NOT WANT the Youth Group to look like slackers or parasites, where the day care folks do the majority of the work. But I also do not want to spend all day Saturday working the garage sale. But when I asked the kids for a show of hands of who would be there Saturday, they all kind of looked away. (And I don't think it's that they had other commitments; they are quick to observe when they have soccer games or stuff and can't do things).

So I feel like I'm forced to go and do the work to make a decent showing for my group. Maybe I should just say "forget it" and let the day care folks get irritated and then observe that they deserve most of the money because they did most of the work, and then just concede that to them, then later tell the youth group, "Sorry, but we aren't getting Guitar Hero or a new ping pong table; we didn't do a big enough share of the work so I told the day care that they could have 90% (or whatever) of the money because that's the proportion of work they did."

I don't know. I do think we should be teaching the Little Red Hen story - the idea that it looks quite shabby for you to show up at the kitchen door, palm outstretched, when the bread comes out of the oven, if you made excuses for why you couldn't help when that grain was being grown, ground, or kneaded into bread.

I have no problem with providing bread for those who, shall we say (to keep the metaphor going) have arthritis and can no longer knead bread. Or those who are too young to safely scythe the grain. But when there's some great galoot of a dog or cat hanging around playing Gameboy and not lifting a finger to contribute to the production of the bread....that's when I have a problem. I get very tired of people who are "takers." I do not mind being a "giver," but I get frustrated with learned helplessness, laziness, and ingratitude...which are all things I see in the various situations where I do do hard work in my life.

So, let's bring back the Little Red Hen. I know, some people think it's overly harsh. I'm sure some people will view it suspiciously as a tool of the libertarians or even the Ayn Rand followers. (Ironically enough, it probably originated in pre-Revolutionary Russia). But I do think we need to remind people that if you've got the capacity to work, it's really ultimately more fair - and ultimately more rewarding to YOU - to pitch in and help out rather than sit on your butt waiting for the bread to come out of the oven, and then expect the Red Hens of the world to give you some.

Because you really, really don't want to piss off the Red Hen. Anyone who can sow, raise, thresh, and grind grain, and then bake it up into bread is someone you want to be on the good side of.