Who, Me?
A Life Lesson for Children

ELIZABETH GEORGE
June 24, 2026

I’ve probably mentioned that I taught high school English for 13 1/2 years before I left to become a fulltime writer. This was an extremely long time ago as I began my career in 1975.

In the latter part of my teaching career, I had upper classmen as students. When these students happened to be seniors—or 12th graders—I would begin the year or the final semester with the same brief speech in which I told them: “Please believe me. If, at the end of the year, you do not have a passing grade, I will not give you a passing grade.” It was a simple enough concept, I thought. To this day, I still wonder why there were always students who didn’t believe me, who assumed that I would fold and give them at least a merciful D- so that they could graduate. I never said I would do that, and there were certainly former students who could attest to the fact that I would not do that.

Because several of the classes I taught were fairly difficult, I always offered various extra credit assignments to the students. Should a student lose points for cheating, plagiarism, truancy, or tardiness, there was a way in which they could make up those points. I let them know that I was good at spotting assignments and tests that involved cheating. It had to do with the way I graded my papers, but I didn’t tell them that part. They could take me at my word or they could assume that I was blowing smoke and try their luck.

Every year that I taught 12th graders, there was at least one student who either didn’t believe me or didn’t care or presumed there was going to be an exception made because he/she was…you name it: a football player, a class officer, a schoolwide officer, an amusing addition to the classroom, a budding artist, a major talent in one area or another. I’m not sure why they thought this as I never gave an indication that this was a likely occurrence.

I also had one day during each semester when students were able to make up all tests that they might have missed during the weeks of the class. This makeup date was posted every year, right next to the clock on the classroom wall to make sure that everyone saw it. The makeup tests began immediately after school and I would stay until the last student had completed whatever test or tests he/she needed to take. I’d learned that it was easier to have one makeup day each semester rather than have to accommodate twenty or thirty students over the course of a semester who did not come to class the day of a test due to illness or for another reason. And yet…there were always students who did not show up for the makeup tests.

What sometimes occurred when a student was going to receive an F in my class was a phone call from a parent who wanted to know why his/her child was not going to graduate. What also sometimes occurred was a request, a plea, a demand from the parent that the student be given a passing grade. I remember one mother in particular whose son was the leader of the school band and very well known as a result. Although the senior picnic at the beach fell on the same day as the makeup tests, he had decided to remain at the beach rather than to return to school on the bus provided for the rest of the 12th graders, which would have given him more than enough time to make up the tests he had missed. As a result of his decision to remain at the beach and skip the makeup tests, he failed the class, which he needed to graduate. When I explained all of this to his mother, she brokenly asked me if I had children, as if this were going to drive home a point that was escaping my comprehension of the situation. I explained to her that she could do many things for her son and that she had probably done just that throughout his life. But what she couldn’t do was to take his tests for him.

I’ve always believed that one of life’s great lessons that parents are meant to hand down to their children is taking responsibility for their actions: to own the results of the decisions that they make. Rushing in to change the outcome of decision made by a child cannot—in my opinion—be good parenting. Yes, sometimes the outcome of a child’s decision is painful to the child. Sometimes the outcome of a child’s decision has a cost. But children who aren’t guided or taught to take responsibility for their decisions (or, perhaps better said, their choices) are being denied a crucial life lesson, one that will affect not only them but the people with whom they interact in the future.

I’ve never understood why parents do this. Of course, no one wants one’s child to have to experience pain (physical, psychic, or spiritual), disappointment, loss, or failure. But all of these are part of life, and it seems to me that parents’ responsibility in their roles as parents is to guide their children from birth to adulthood, and experiencing and recovering from pain is part of a child’s journey. I’ve never assumed that this was an easy task. Most parents do suffer with their children. But as far as I’m concerned, their duty as parents is to help their children interpret life, not to live it for them.

The ability to take responsibility for one’s actions is crucial to the learning process. It’s also crucial to having healthy relationships with friends, relatives, partners, etc.
Also crucial to the learning process is the ability to admit wrong-doing, the ability to apologize, and the willingness to make amends.

Few politicians in my lifetime have taken responsibility for their actions and apologized for mistakes made or shameful behaviors discovered. Instead, scandals, illegal activities, shameful mistakes, and outright criminal behavior have been “spun” so as to make the situation more palatable both for the politician and for the politician’s potential voters.

We’re seeing the long term result of this now, in our President. From childhood through adulthood, Donald Trump has never taken responsibility for his decisions, his actions, or his choices. The current best example of this is the reflecting pool that extends from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. Donald Trump made the decisions about the rehabilitation of the pool. He personally chose the color; he personally chose the contractor who would paint it; he directed a motorcade to drive over the pool’s newly-painted surface so that he could inspect it without having to talk to reporters. When the pool was filled, it quickly became a petri dish for the massive growth of algae. At the same time as the algae was blooming, the blue paint beneath it began failing, rising to the pool’s surface in sheets. Experts interviewed about the failing paint indicated a number of potential causes: inadequate preparation on the part of the contractor; inadequate curing of the paint; moisture trapped beneath the coating and the surface beneath it; mechanical stress from vehicles and foot traffic upon it during inspections.

President Truman once said “The buck stops here” in reference to the President’s responsibility for the decisions made by him and in his name. But that is not a philosophy that Donald Trump embraces. Indeed, the long term result of Trump’s inability and refusal to take responsibility for his actions, decisions, and behaviors is what we’re seeing now: despite expert opinions on the cause of the failure of the reflecting pool’s paint, five people have been arrested for alleged vandalism or damage to the pool.

Trump cannot abide being asked to take responsibility for anything. He cannot abide taking responsibility for the damage to the reflecting pool or, indeed, for anything else that has happened during his second term: from the mindless cutting of essential services brought about by Elon Musk and his DOGE boys to a war he started without need or provocation because he cannot cope with the success our first Black President had in negotiating with Iran. Donald Trump’s parents failed him, and now he is failing us. Worse, he is blaming others for his shortcomings, his cowardice, his errors in judgment, his choices, and his rank imperfections.

And here we are today. All that remains is for him to cry “Do it to, Julia!” Or, perhaps better said, all that remains is for him to force someone else to cry it for him.

© 2026 Elizabeth George
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104