What is Duty?

The word duty comes from the Latin word deb’re. The concept refers to having a certain obligation. For example: “In the face of an emergency a doctor’s duty is to save the life, no matter who the injured person is”, “The policeman did not do his duty as he observed how a woman was robbed and did not intervene”, “Caring for his children is every father’s duty”.

A duty may arise from the imposition of a law or some kind of regulation. Those who drive a car, to cite a case, must wear a seat belt, as well as motorcycle drivers must wear a helmet. Those who fail to do this duty commit a misconduct.

Cycling Helmet

Duty can also arise from a moral mandate linked to gratitude or respect. Suppose a man learns that a person who helped him in his childhood has serious financial problems. The subject feels that he has a duty to collaborate with the one who gave him a hand in the past: that’s why he offers him a well-paid job in his company.

There is also talk of duty to refer to something that is expected of a person, usually by the principles established by society and the historical context in which he is immersed. The first paragraph speaks of the duty of parents to care for their children; it’s hard to imagine anyone objecting to this claim, because people are helpless during our first years of life.

In this context, we can say that a person’s duties do not always depart from the expectations of society in general but also from those around it. For example, if a man tells a friend that they are going to fire a partner of his because of a mistake he has made and he responds to “it is your duty to speak to your superiors to clarify the situation and prevent this injustice”, the term duty in this case symbolizes what his friend expects from him, which is an opinion that rises to the category of moral mandate.

The notion, on the other hand, may allude to a debt. If a young person applies for a loan of 5000 pesos from a bank, which grants it with an interest of 10%, the boy will owe 5500 pesos to the bank.

What is Debt

Finally, it is called duty to the task that students must perform in their homes on behalf of teachers in order to complete class learning: “The teacher gave us many homework for the weekend”“I do not understand how to do the duty of language”.

The duties that teachers send to students can be very varied, and in fact this obligation exists in both elementary and high school. In higher grades of education, which may include the last mandatory years and the entire period of university training, it is not common for teachers to require the completion of specific tasks from one lesson to the next, although they do usually commission practical work that must then be presented and defended against the entire class.

While homework begins as an obligation that younger students receive in their early school years, over time many of them appreciate the benefits that this practice at home can offer them to fix knowledge and face certain challenges that are not common in the classroom. For this reason, people who take their education seriously are looking for ways to get rich all the time, both inside and outside the school.