Children are the focus of all the parents in the world. So it's very common to see this sence that two mothers encount each other on the way home and stop their steps to talk about raising their kids. In terms of children education, how to raise the sense of responsibility of a kid has been broadly discussed. Recently there is a new saying that the best way to raise the sense of responsibility is to let children keep a pet. In my opinion, it's a reasonable and accessable way but not the best way.
A sense of responsibility can be defined as an awareness of taking all the results of what someone is responsible for, no matter whether the results are good or bad. It's been seen as the hallmark of mature people, which itself tells its importance in children education. After all, nobody wants their kids to become someone childish when they go to the society. And in my view, a very important reason of why a mature man must be a responsible one is that a mature man must have gone through a great number of results caused by himself, and certainly have suffered a lot of pains due to himself. Therefore, this man will take much more care of what he is responsible for in the future to avoid bad results happening again. So as far as I'm concerned, the best way to raise the sense of responsibility is to make children suffer pains that caused by themselves. Now we can come back to the way that let children keep a pet. There is no doubt that it will work well because few children can keep a pet well. To keep a pet needs people to do many things carefully, which can even be difficult tasks for adults, not to mention a child. For example, good pet keepers should know the right time to feed their pets and do this every day. Also, they have to observe the pets' daily activities in a high frequency in case the pets get diseases. Children will certainly screw it up in most cases, which can in turn be a good opportunity to give a lesson about responsibility to children. When they see their lovely pets die, the terrible and sorrow feelings will nail into their hearts and drive them to be much more careful next time, in this way a sense of responsibility can be raised.
Although it will be useful to raise children's sense of responsibilty to have them keep a pet, this way is not the best one. There are two reasons as follows. Firstly, this way can be a bit of cruel for animal own their lives that should get respects from human. We can not educate children in the cost of animal's lives. In addition, there is a traditional but better way to educate children. That is to teach them a good habit and scold them when they violate the habit. For instance, when I was a child my parents tell me not to play before the homework is done or I would be punished. This really worked so well that I never played before finishing my homeword until graduation from college. Compared with making an animal dead, it's a better way at the lower cost to scold children.
In conclusion, having children raise an animal can help them raise a sense of responsibility efficiently, but this method is not the best for its heavy costs and for the being of another better way.