La Diva Althouse links to yet another example of mindless, moonbatty, feel-good nonsense in (surprise!) Seattle, and though I could have fun pounding leftist nutjobs, buried in the comment thread of Ann’s article lurks a more important, more significant topic.
How should we react to inappropriate behavior?
My general policy was that I expected (actually demanded, though I didn’t word it like that) that students would behave like mature adults and treat each other accordingly. I did not tolerate abusive language or behavior because it was inappropriate, unseemly, and immature, and because it would not be tolerated in the workplace.
It was also my policy to treat students like adults — just as I expected them to behave. I had a handful of violations over the years, but almost without exception, students rose to my expectations. If you treat students like adults, they will (as best they can) behave like adults. Treat them like children, and they will behave like children. Water seeks its own level.
I maintained an atmosphere of decorum by example. I dressed like an adult, in business dress casual, and not like an old hippie. I was the instructor, not my students’ friend. I made no attempt to be hip. Never did I address a student by his first name. Johnny Blake was, to me, Mr. Blake. Formal? Perhaps, but the point was respect, not formality. Calling my student Ms. Krikorian instead of Dee-Dee or Candy demonstrated to her and the rest of the class that I respected them, and treated them like adults.
And nearly always, students acted like adults. They treated each other with respect, and behaved like adults. When I walked into the classroom, talking subsided and I never had to tell them to be quiet. My students never threw paper wads, interrupted anyone, or misbehaved in the classroom. Discussion stayed firmly on topic, without my having to redirect it. Students took the class seriously, because I did, and because I treated them like adults. Most amazing of all, perhaps, is the extremely high student evaluations I got semester after semester, with frequent comments about the level of respect I had for them.
But my point is that there is a vast difference between my policy in the classroom and attempts to legislate decorum (speech codes) or idiocy like having a funeral for the n-word.
Despite the way I treated (and behaved around) my students, I steadfastly (though quietly) opposed campus speech codes and other hare-brained liberal nonsense. Several times, I came under fire for not going along with these flagrant violations of the Constitution. Interestingly, I was always attacked by faculty who behaved and dressed like kids around their students, called them by their first names and expected to be addressed by first name, treated their students like children, and by their own accounts, got much more immature and inappropriate behavior from their students than I did mine.
That’s not as surprising as it may seem, if you think about it. Adulthood is all about taking responsibility for your own behavior, and college is that first step into adulthood, when you leave your parents’ home and try to stand on your own two feet for the first time in your life. Legislators and campus control freaks attempt to legislate decorum because in their world, everyone is a child who needs to be restrained. Nobody can be trusted to behave like a responsible adult and make his own decisions. And the inevitable result is that students behave like irresponsible children.
One of my students some years ago had been arrested along with ten or twelve other students for public intoxication, assault, and vandalism. They had been at a kegger, and they had not only gotten into a fistfight, but turned over cars in the parking lot outside the apartment building.
I never asked him about it, or mentioned it. Interestingly, neither did any of the other students, at least not in my classroom. I only knew about it because it had been printed in the campus paper. I will say, though, that he was a perfect gentleman in my class, and the last student I would have expected to engage in that kind of thing. And the Monday after the incident, he was visibly embarrassed when he walked into my classroom, until he realized nobody was going to mention the incident.
Treat students like adults, and they will behave like adults. He did in my class. Always. Treat them like children, and they will behave like children. The university treated him like a child, so he acted like a child. But never in my class.
The very few times I did get inappropriate behavior, I dealt with the violators as adults, not as children who needed to be corrected or punished. I did not deduct points as some kind of micro-legislation. Instead, I sat down with the student and asked him what his behavior was supposed to accomplish, and why he thought the behavior was appropriate. I approached the problem in terms of what was, and was not, acceptable behavior for adults — and it worked. Those few violations I had were never repeated, and the violators grew up after I talked to them.
Leaving aside the issue of Constitutionality, campus speech codes and “hate speech” legislation and idiotic feel-good word funerals, if anything, have the opposite effect than their intent. They send the clear message that people are children who need to be controlled and cannot be trusted to behave civilly. They create the opposite results because people will eventually lash back against control, and because people will behave as you expect them to behave.
Whereas “nigger” was never uttered in my classroom and would have been dealt with had it ever happened, legislating against it is counter-productive. And illegal.
And that’s My Word (TM, John Gibson).
