With all respect to Aretha Franklin (pun intended), I’m going to write a commentary concerning basic respect.  In my day, you respected your elders (and youngers if you were a kind person) or you were usually in major trouble.  AND WE LIKED IT!  Ok, I’m starting to sound like the “get off my lawn” guy, but the longer I teach, the more transparent the disrespect becomes.  I’m not so naive to think that all of my students have always respected me.  Sometimes I didn’t deserve the respect.  But it was usually more covert, or the kids talked to each other behind my back.  Now the disrespect is much more transparent, and the interesting thing is, some students seem completely taken aback when I do something about it. Or in the case of this last week, TRY to do something about it.

This last week when asking students to participate in an activity during class, several looked me in the eye and said “no”.  Now, the usual thing for me to do is to remind them that music is a class, just like any other class, like reading or math and ask them if they would refuse to do what math teacher asked and they usually say no.  Well, then why do you feel like you can say no in music?  Because I don’t want to do it.  Hmmm.  Then we try the encouraging thing.  I know you can do it!  Let’s just give it a try and I’ll help you.  No.  They didn’t budge.  Then we have to do the consequence thing.  If you don’t participate you give me no choice and I have to ask you to sit away from your friends (we’re not allowed to call it a specific title anymore because it can apparently hurt their self esteem.  Who knew?)  And the response?  Go ahead, it doesn’t mean anything anyway and I don’t care.  Okay….

So in one case, I sent the student to the Buddy Room, where that teacher asked what was going on and this student looked at him and said “I didn’t want to do it so I told her no”.  Not apologetic, just matter-of-fact.  No.  Now, what do I do with a student who refuses to do something and doesn’t care what the consequences are?  Maybe because there are no real consequences.  But some of that is above my pay grade.

We seem to think in this culture that we can just be logical with children about things.  That if we just talk to them and give them time to think about it that everything will be fine.  And for some kids, it is enough because there is something in them that understands that being disrespectful is wrong, and they’re sorry.  But there are those stubborn, usually highly intelligent kids who get that there are no real consequences happening and so they’ve got nothing to lose.  If they are disrespectful they get a few minutes in a safe seat or a time out and then they get to come back.  It’s not very painful and they can deal with that AND they’ve gotten to say or behave the way they felt like behaving.  Showing respect for people should be a foundational lesson for children.  You don’t have to agree with everyone or even like them, but unless they’ve done something major to lose your respect, you should try.  And even if you disrespect someone, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.

Now, I know I’m going to have a lot of people disagree with me, especially in the current political climate.  But they will have to prove to me that all of the disrespect floating around right now has improved the situation.  Nobody is willing to dialogue with someone who is rudely disrespectful.  The door is closed.  However, if I can be kind and respectfully air my grievances, someone else MAY be willing to listen.  There is subtlety in this that needs to be taught.  There’s a reason there are old sayings like “you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar”.  The vinegar may attract them, but the honey catches and keeps them.

So to allow children to get away with this is really a disservice.  As they get older, they may THINK they can get away with this, but the truth is it will eventually lose them jobs and relationships.  There is a level of mistrust that develops when I don’t feel I’m respected and that type of behavior/attitude tends to breed strife.  No employer in the world wants to have an employee that openly disrespects him/her.  And if the employer is not worth respecting, find another job.

It all boils down to basic kindness.  Treat others the way you want to be treated.  These may all seem like “old” sayings, but they’ve been around for a while for a reason.  Encourage the children you know to follow these old sayings, bring it to their attention when they’re being disrespectful, explain why it’s not okay and give them appropriate consequences to help them learn.  I’m not sure I have a lot of hope for the adults in the world right now where this issue is concerned, but I have hope for the next generation IF we teach them how important it is to respect others.