We Always Have a Choice

February 4, 2011

Do you ever find yourself unearthing gems in the most unusual places? Being a lover of Young Adult literature, I dug into the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness on a recommendation from one of the many blogs I follow. Ness' third book in this trilogy, Choas Walking Monsters of Men, falls under the classic dystopian genre that is popular in YA literature these days. Buried in this 608-page tome of chaos, came the line that made me stop and take pause.

To say you have' no choice' is to release yourself from responsibility and that is not how a person with integrity acts.

Given the fact that this book is classified as the dystopia genre, you may be wondering why I singled out that sentence and even wrote it down. After all, one definition of dystopia is 'an imaginary place or condition where everything is as bad as possible...degraded into a repressive and controlled state often under the guise of being utopian.' So that line fits there.

There are times right now when schools may feel like a dystopian society; budget cuts, mandated programs, assessments that don't impact instruction, as well as poor teaching practices being implemented under the guise of trying to 'do what's best for children.' However we found great heart and encouragement in Ness's line. We talk to so many of you who are frustrated when you are asked to teach a program with fidelity, or have your most at risk students pulled from your classrooms to be tutored with some of our least trained employees for extended periods of time. You ask us for advice on what to do in these situations. When we read this line from Walking Monsters of Men, we realized the power in these words. We teachers are people of integrity, however, if we relinquish our choices to others, especially when we know it is not what is best for our students, we also let go of our responsibility to our children and ourselves.

Next time you are inclined to say the words, "I have no choice," we hope you will think about this line and remember, because we have integrity we always have a choice.