Numero 2

It is my understanding that the role a school plays in a student's life is a huge one, with lasting effects. The job of a school is to best prepare each student to have a sucessful life in the "real world," a.k.a. after all schooling is finished. A huge part of getting along and succeeding in life is not the square root of 117, but knowledge of current events, social issues and having a solid structure of moral values to help you make make decisions along the way. For this reason I think it's absolutely necessary for schools to help student's understand their own individual morals and give them information and current social issues. This is imperitive because it is these things that supplement, complement and allow the application of things learned in school, such as math, in the real world.
The talk of values and moral choices has always been a sensitive subject for schools, which has led them to avoid integrating either of them into the curriculum's. This is an easy way to quiet controversy and steer clear of problems such as the pledge of allegiance "under god" wars. However, I believe this to be cowardly, and if the true intention of a school is to send it's students into the workplaces and leading positions of the world best prepared to succeed, which the it should be, they must address moral choices in school. However, this isn't to say they should project any particular morals, values, or choices onto the students. There should simply be time set aside for the student's to come up with morals and values that are true to themselves. That way they are more likely to stick to their decided morals having agreed to them themselves, and this makes it more likely that they will follow them and use them to make moral choices for the remainder of their lives.
A person's entire life is a very long time, and I acknowledge that morals can and will probalby change due to many things, one of them will probably be social issues. "Social issues" can mean anything from bullying, to the Iraqi war, to gay rights and abortion. These issues going on in the world will undoubtedly will affect one's moral choices and values and vise versa. Because evryone's choices and stances will differ it's not appropriate for teachers to decide what stand the students should take on the issue but present them with information about it. Knowledge is always key and with the proper amount of info adn a strong set of morals, students will have much less difficulty making moral choices and forming opinions on social issues.
Success is a difficult thing to define, as it is different for all people. But usually it includes happiness and achievement. Neither of these things are easy to come by and to obtain them it takes hard work. Success is not achieved by taking the easy way out, and schools need to recognize this and however hard or time consuming it may be they must help students understand moral choices and social issues. However, they by no means should push any particular stance onto their pupils. If this begins to happen our world will undoubtedly become a more informed place and consequently a better one.