Pro Educational Toys: Today's Children by Guest Blogger Matthew Reisberg

This week's featured Guest is Matthew Reisberg, Principal/Administrator Carroll Christian School in Westminster, Maryland where my Chinese Foreign Exchange student attends High School. This article is adapted from the weekly newsletter of Carroll Christian School and succinctly describes a major issue with America's children today.

While there are many great and wonderful things to say about our children, there is an alarming trend across American that Mr. Reisberg addresses:

Have you noticed that today's kids are ok with a mess? They believe that you consume what you want and just leave the trash for someone else to pick up. They are ok with making a mess with food and wasting it. Watch a group of young people sit together and then get up and go somewhere. It looks like a war zone. The chairs are a mess and trash is everywhere except the trash can. Who will volunteer to clean it? Who will have the character to stop and say that this is not the way we found it?

After a ball game at Carroll Christian School (CCS) last year, I literally carried three armloads of trash out of the student section.

Have you been in the locker rooms? Have you checked out the lost and found? Today's kids just throw their belongings around and, many times, leave them. You can tell them that one of their items is in lost and found, but they don't even come to retrieve it. They think, “Why bother getting it when mom and dad will just buy me something new?” Do you ever wonder why this is the case? Are they expecting someone else to do it? Have they been taught to do it? Did we just teach them to get up and leave it because we as parents will always pick it up for them? Yes, society teaches them to not care and leave it, but we need to teach them to respect the land. They need to learn to take care of what God has blessed them with.

The last generation was taught by our parents to respect property, to not litter, to leave things better than we found them. If we did not follow those rules, we had more work or a lesson applied to the seat of understanding. It may not be what we wanted, but it was what we needed. I wonder how America will look 20 years from now if we continue to have a generation that does not value anything.

I encourage those of you with little ones to start early. Teach them to work and not accept everything given. Teach them to pick up after themselves.

I once had a student who literally could not wash the lunch table. When I asked him why he was not able to do it, he respond that he did not know how because his mother always did it for him. This was a high school student. I followed up with mom. She said that she never lets him clean because she wanted him to enjoy his childhood.

Make them clean. Teach them now. Don't let the opportunities pass. When they leave your home, they will be dependent on you and unable to do anything.

Teach them to work and to value a dollar. Don't just give them everything. I know, you want them to have everything that you didn't have growing up, but you turned out okay, didn't you? You learned to work for things and value them. Giving children everything they want will only make them want more and not appreciate what they have. In other words, they don't appreciate you. Why? Because they expect it. We have trained this generation to have a sense of entitlement.

We need to change it soon or our nation will pay the price.

Matthew Reisberg graduated from Pensacola Christian College with a degree in History and Coaching in 1996. He taught History and Coached at Carroll Christian for 12 years before moving to Administration. He has a Master’s in Christian Education from Patriot University and has credits toward a second Master’s in General Education from Liberty University. Mr. Reisberg built the High School Program at Mount Airy Christian Academy while he served in Administration there for 5 years before returning to be the Administrator at Carroll Christian for the last 5 years. Along with Administrating he also coaches several sports teams and teaches Economics to the Seniors.