Like, [expletive] bruh, I ain’t doing that problem set. The mindset that some students have to think this is okay to say is getting just a little out of hand. But what’s really going on, and, more importantly, what’s the path to a better relationship between students and teachers?
Finding the problem is always the first step to troubleshooting, so let’s cross off a few wrong answers. First, informality with teachers isn’t wrong…to an extent. The role that concepts like slang and informal speech play in society is to signal closeness between individuals or groups by virtue of showing that a person is comfortable enough to break a mild societal norm. Or said in another way, if I’m talking casual around you, it means I’m close to you, because I don’t care about being all uptight and trying to look good. The second explanation, although it was saying the same thing as the first, seems more personal. But the first seems more credible.
There’s a time and place for any way of speaking on the formality spectrum, and school, until recently, has been considered a place for formal speaking. The issue is this creates an environment that sets emotions aside for image – not a very healthy example for students. Keeping a moderately formal atmosphere may be the better choice for the place that students spend a large chunk of their days. But there’s a certain level of properness that needs to be expected to prepare students for the business world.
What happens when we start having job interviews for college educated careers? Is Jim the interviewer for fancy tech company number 31 going to keep interviewing a fresh out of college twenty-something after hearing, “‘Sup bruh,” during a handshake? No, he will not.
But there may be a more concerning issue for high schoolers: rudeness towards teachers. “There seems to be an awful lot of entitlement among ninth graders, and tenth grade it starts to disappear a bit…[eleventh graders] are generally pretty in the game, but, by the time they’re seniors, there’s this laissez faire approach, and they’re just trying to finish,” says Pam, a local public high school teacher. She explains that both the entitlement of younger grades and the apathy of older ones end up expressing themselves as rudeness, with freshmen often being, “not ashamed to tell a staff member off.” Seniors can be a different problem, because they don’t always listen to directions, because they’re just trying to get through their last year of high school. This is pretty obviously rude, down one road or another, which not only hurts the relationship between the individual student and the teacher, but, more importantly, rubs off on the rest of the class, spreading like a weed.
This rudeness and its spreading also detracts from the classroom environment. Pam has something to say about that. “You’re dealing with attitude and behavior – you’re no longer dealing with the assignment. You have skills, and then you have behavioral activity. Both have to cooperate to get anything done.” Furthermore, it teaches students bad habits. This goes back to how the business world will be once we’re all in that environment. You can’t cuss out your boss, and you obviously can’t say, “nah, I’m good,” when asked to fill out some paperwork. You will get fired.
But to bring a problem into the spotlight without proposing at least a path forward would be about as productive as throwing an F-bomb at your math teacher. The surface of the problem seems to lie in students thinking this behavior is actually perfectly okay, but the deep sea trenches may give more of the picture. Most of the time, when people are entitled, it’s out of a sense of being more special than the crowd around them. The truth is, you aren’t. I’m not. Nobody is. People aren’t judged like rocks on who has the prettier patterns or who has the least cracks. In the end, face to face with a lion or tiger or bear (oh my), we’re all just as special, which is, in the grand design, not enough to give you the right to mouth off to someone above you (or anyone at that, but that’s for another day). In what else students can do to improve this problem, Pam had one more piece of advice. “Help me by letting me help you.” Rather than fighting teachers’ authority, realize it is there for a reason. It’s to turn us into fully realized adults. It’s to prepare us for the business world. And, most of all, it’s to help.
