A teen pushes in front of an elderly woman to be first in line at a convenience store.
Toddlers poop in the public pool but the parents leave it and walk away.
Student employees make lewd comments to coworkers but parents deny it ever happened and contest the students’ firing.
Many blogs and editorials about civility discuss behavior at sports events, road rage and other driving discourtesies, gang atrocities, email meanness, and other such behaviors.
I’m just thinking about rude and uncivil kids. At our children’s choir a few weeks ago, my husband (the conductor) brought some little boxes of juice for a break time. Several kids pushed hard to be first to get their juices. The next rehearsal, my husband spent some time talking about kindness, manners, honesty–well, civility. The week after that, two blushing girls were brought in by their mother. They confessed that they had stolen several juices after class, to be taken home. Their mother had made the girls work to earn money to pay for the juices.
Good for Mom! And afterward, the civility lesson seemed to have taken hold because all the children have behaved with more kindness and courtesy to each other and to the adults.
I would guess that civility, honesty, kindness and accountability are not actively taught in many of my students’ homes. Where these virtues are taught, the students’ behavior brilliantly shows it. And in the many cases where they’re not taught in the home, who’s supposed to teach it?
Seems that it comes down to teachers in classrooms. I know that I spend a good deal of time with direct teaching and also role play and also modeling to teach civility. I absolutely do not allow unkindness or bullying, or rude/lewd behavior, in my art classes at my junior high. Fortunately our school behavior program backs me up with an escalating series of consequences for offenders.
I have noticed, however, that when there are incidents of rudeness or unkindness or lewdness, they often surprise me with how far they cross the line. There has always been such behavior in our society, but our Generation Me society has pushed it far. “Brat” movies and TV shows–the kind that make bratty behavior funny–certainly promote outrageous uncivility, and so do all those ubiquitous reality shows that reward cheating, lying and nasty behavior of the contestants. How can kids who have never been taught kind behavior learn it?
Looks like it comes down to us: teachers in classrooms.
I’m a high school English teacher. My constant refrain to the kids: If your parents knew how you behaved in school, they’d be mortified!
I teach second grade in South Arkansas. The same thing is happening in elementary. Sometimes I wish I could take most of them home and teach them manners. I am glad that there are teachers and other adults that step in to fill in the gap that parents don’t fill.
I teach Health in a middle school and I infuse all sorts of “civility” lessons. It takes up curriculum time but it’s well worth it when I receive comments from other teachers and parents. Keep it up!!
Why would the parents be “mortified”? That’s where the students are learning this behavior from, most of the time. Since when can students be “fired”? I wished I’d known about this when I started teaching. There a number of students I would have fired early on. Gives new meaning to the words “pink slip”.
I agree with Alexander, sometimes parents and adults behave worse than their youngsters.
I spend quite some time in my classroom too, informing the students of what kind of behavioral expectations I have on them. Not only because I believe we all have to help out raising young people in society, but also for selfish reasons. I wish to have a manageable work environment, which will both benefit myself and the students!
The firing was from a job, alas. I wish we could fire students from a classroom, but universal public education prohibits that.
The children of today definitely are being brought up with a different set of morals that my and earlier generations are accustomed to. I teach in a Title 1 school, where I experience such rude behavior as mentioned in the starting blog. It is a very sad thing when you see a third grader to tell a teacher to “f*** off,” but these kids are a product of their home environment. When I meet the parents of some of my “strong” students, all I can think of is that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. In my school we actually developed a STRIVE program with focuses on various character traits throughout the year, all grades included. In today’s society teachers are more than just a teacher of reading and math; we are the teachers of morals and manners as well. I just keep wondering when are the parents going to start acting like parents.
Lately we at our school have been told, “never assume that your students know anything.” With this new concept in mind we spend a lot of time teaching kindness, respect and what those look like in real life. It takes a lot of time at the beginning of the year teaching and reteaching these concepts, but we find our students are much happier. Lets face it, someone has to take responsibility and most parents aren’t prepared to teach respect at home.