Taking Student Responsibility Seriously

Abstract

In the last three decades American educators have been heavily concerned with student rights and equal educational opportunity. These and other concerns have caused educators (and the public) to give teachers the primary responsibility for student learning and have drawn attention away from questions about the student's responsibility for learning. Two recent approaches attribute the ultimate responsibility for learning to the student. These general approaches are constructively criticized so that the key insights can be used to set and articulate a defensible theory of student responsibility. The major conclusion is that high-school students have both aright to an education and aresponsibility to use educational resources sensibly