The class of 2011 graduated June 11 on a Saturday. Over the years many of the teachers have talked to their classes about how this class can’t seem to accept the word “no.” As students, we love to argue if we cannot have our way. Many of our early generations have been getting the idea that the only way to get through life is to fight and argue for what we want.

In the past, classes have argued to cancel tests, have less homework, and watch movies in class instead of doing class work. Teachers are used to this dialogue now, but it wasn’t always that way.

“When I was a student I remember my teacher telling the class what we would be doing. Either we had class work or a pop quiz or maybe even a test,” my father Willis Castle III said about his school days. “The students would groan but we would do as we were told because if we didn’t then we would get slapped upside the head.”

I’m not sure slapping a student upside the head is a good way to get the students to do as they are told but as the teachers let students slide by on their whimpering the students get what they want and learn not to do what they are told.

Before we have the chance to realize that we need to be growing and getting ready to become adults in the real world, we tend say the simple word “no” when we don’t want to do something. If we can’t act like adults at school who says we can do it in our future?

Our teachers are like our bosses. Would you back talk to your boss? Would you yell at your boss if he did not give you what you wanted? Not if you wanted to keep your job. If we are asked to do homework we should do it. If we are asked to take a test we should take it. Our teachers have us do what they ask us to do in order to teach us, not to make us angry.

Students have believed that if our parents let us do what we want then our teachers should as well, but it doesn’t work that way, or at least it shouldn’t. Our parents have lived with us, dealt with us, they know us. Teachers, on the other hand, are here to teach, not to be our parents; they are here to get us ready for the real world, when our parents are not there to fix all of our problems.

They are here to make us into the people we need to be.

Melissa Castle is a 2011 2011 graduate of Kingston High School.