Initiative: Where have you gone?

It seems that in this age and time, more and more students have NO INITIATIVE. Gone were the days when the teacher will say one thing and the students will do their part without ever asking for more directions or for more specifications about a project or two. Initiative has already gone down the drain--- why and how? Well, it could be because most of the children these days are no longer trained to have them. Spoon-feeding information as well as not giving children room to discover their potentials and hone them. I am so glad my siblings and I were trained the Montessori way as it has trained us to be persons with initiative. But Montessori or not, it all goes back to training in our home. My mother and father has always emphasized initiative as a means for coping and survival in anything and everything.. 

As a teacher, I try to emphasize to my students the value of having initiative, and in one way or another, I tell them that initiative can still be developed. Unfortunately, it seems too hard to teach that to persons who has already developed their sense of identity and would not want to do anything to make better of themselves. 

Initiative means knowing what to do at a given situation, asserting oneself and taking charge to control a specific situation, and win or be productive in the process. It is taking the step towards a specific action or goal. And what saddens me is that, I have only met a few students who take it upon themselves, the initiative to perform a task more independently, successfully. All the rest,  they call or text from time to time and ask for specific solutions or answers, as if the instruction given was very difficult to understand. 

I am a teacher, I do not spoon-feed. If one wants to learn then one must do his or her share in the learning process. My teachers did not spoon-feed me and my classmates, therefore, we learned hands-on. I worry for some of my students who are dependent on others and to their teachers. I wonder how and what they will become should they continue to be so dependent.. 

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