It has been said that when an archer misses the mark it is never the fault of the target. I fear we all to quickly and unjustly ascribe responsibility for things to almost everyone and everything except that to which it rightly belongs. We hold people accountable for great feats without regard for what tools we give them and sometimes without regard for him to whom responsibility for the exercise of agency truly belongs.
Take education as an example. With the advent of misbegotten notions like the No Child Left Behind Act, we hold teachers responsible for the performance, advancement, and education of students. However, we ignore the fact that even as we hold teachers more and more accountable for achievements in this regard we render them more and more impotent to actually enforce the measures necessary to create and maintain a learning environment. Administrators fear bureaucrats who have power to penalize them and parents, who are frequently only participants by hearsay, because it might cost them salary, job advancement, or other remunerations. Teachers fear students who are more interested in snogging, socialization and substance abuse than they are with learning. In many instances, teachers have become nothing more than glorified babysitters, which may be the reason why some people advocate so heavily for all day kindergarten, so that parents can be freed of the responsibility to train and nurture their own children.
As is the case in archery, the fault lies, not in the stars dear Brutus, but in ourselves. It isn't really the teacher's fault or the parent's fault or even the administrator's. It is the fault of the students themselves. The student, as the archer, is ostensibly aimed at achieving an education, as the target. Teachers, parents, and administrators are the vehicle by which he gets that; they are not the archer. It's not like students are some inanimate object at which we lecture or to which we show things that is not held to any accountability to learn or demonstrate learning. The target does not move. The standards for education are fixed. The student has a bow, a quiver, and arrows, with which to reach the target, and it is these things which we so often blame for the archer student's failure to achieve education. No matter how good the arrows might be, if the student archer does not want to hit the target, knock an arrow, point it at the target, draw the bow, string the bow, or loose the arrow correctly, he can never be on target.
Yet, we blame everyone except him to whom blame rightly belongs. It is folly to hold someone accountable for something that depends on the agency of another person. If the student does not want to learn, no parent, teacher, or administrator can force him. If the student does not respect authority, no teacher can hold his focus. If no teacher is allowed to act as principle power in his own classroom, they can never provide that which we require of them in pusillanimous acts of Congress. At the same time we expect more of them, we neuter their power and influence and cut their salaries, forcing them to do things that never have worked to accomplish things that ultimately depend at least partly on the choices of other people. In the end, the student decides.
In the end of it all, you are the one who writes your own story. You decide at what targets you aim, which bow you use, how you draw your arrows, and to what degree you practice until you hit that at which you aim. Nobody can make you do anything against your own will. Not even God messes with free will. Yet, people will continue to blame everything else- the sun in their eyes, their race, their neighbor, their wage, their age, "big pharma", or "the machine" in order to get out of responsibility for their own choices, accomplishments, and failures. The fault never lies with the target. The fault is with the archer. However poor his tools might be, it is up to him to either learn to use them well or find better ones. However poor his aim might be, it is up to him to learn to draw, aim, and release so as to be on target. However poor his choice of target may be, it is up to him to choose targets that are not only reachable but are also ones worth reaching. The archer is responsible. The archer is you.
If you do not own yourself, you in essence allow someone else to own you. Responsibility and accountability are liberty.
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