("It's a Lack of Respect", She Replied. -- continued)
The Needs of the Group Are Not Recognized
One point should be made clear. These disrespectful students are not “bad.” Very, very few students are so inherently disagreeable that one cannot like them. Apart from the rare student who truly has a sociopathic or narcissistic personality disorder, this essay is not about personality or character flaws.
Indeed, I have had cause to care very much about many of my students as individuals and as a group, even those who do not follow the rules. They are, I believe, inherently good, lovable individuals. I have even told them I love them, as individuals and students. They usually do not know what to do with that love, as if they rarely hear that they are lovable, but they are.
Accordingly, this essay is about the values of a given community or a given society, about the values that prevail in one or more given schools. It is about the tone set by the administration, about the expectations conveyed to students about how they are to behave in the classroom, in clubs, in public areas, and in the dorms. It is about the extent to which the administration sets expectations and supports the faculty when the faculty holds students to those expectations.
It is also about the extent to which individual faculty members themselves choose to put “what should be” ahead of “what is easy or comfortable” in classroom management. It is about the need to do so for the ultimate good of everyone involved.
It is about the need to set and hold to standards that prevent a decline into mediocrity for student body quality, teaching quality and commitment, the school itself, and its reputation throughout the state.
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Other Factors Regarding Student Disrespect
There is an historical aspect to this analysis. It appears that this situation has gotten worse in the years since the Great Recession of 2008, when students have returned to school from the working world and when students have not been able to find jobs so they came to school.
There is also a very serious problem caused by the lack of consistency in what teachers are told to expect of students as to classroom behaviors and the extent to which teachers are consistent from one classroom to the next. Some teachers allow chatting, walking about, leaving to talk on the cellphone, etc. Some allow absolutely none of this. Some are lax in enforcing their own stated rules. They give way to the “what is easy or comfortable” approach.
The result is that students get away with whatever they can, forever testing the limits in meeting their own needs, as adolescents are well known to do. It is no accident that in the United States, adolescence has been considered to last at least until age 22.
Policies also vary. In some how-to-teach classes, it is said, “Talk with the student outside class about disruptive behavior in class.” The effect of that, however, is to allow the behavior to continue in class and to continue to disrupt the class. It sends a message that there will be no serious consequences.
When a teacher takes a student out of class, it can lead to widespread disorder. A class can go out of control very quickly. Even if the teacher takes the student outside, the class will begin to talk during that conversation, and the teacher has to restore order before beginning. Moreover, the student is likely to comply for the time being and then slip back into old behaviors over time.
One has to wonder what standards are being set and insisted on at the grade school, middle school, and high school levels.
What Is Needed
What is obvious is that students should follow the rules. Mature students have said to me, “Why can’t they just follow the rules? The rules are perfectly reasonable.” Mature students follow them. The students who do not follow the rules have a very negative impact on the learning experience of everyone else and make teaching unnecessarily challenging for the instructor.
When a significant percentage of the class is comprised of disruptive students, everyone loses. The good students want to go somewhere else. Teachers who can also go elsewhere. The result is mediocrity---of faculty, of students, of school, of reputation, and of the long-term value of a degree.
