• Cyburbia is a friendly big tent, where we share our experiences and thoughts about urban planning practice, the built environment, planning adjacent topics, and anything else that comes to mind. No ads, no spam, and it's free. It's easy to join!

Miscellaneous 🤷‍♀️ Mewing: Unruly students invent the new concept of being disrespectful to teachers

Maister

Maister

Chairman of the bored
Staff member
Moderator
Messages
38,069
Points
78
You read the headline correctly. It seems young students have now invented a new behavior which is taking the country's schools by storm: being disrespectful to their teachers! The thought of being anything other than respectful to one's teachers never would have crossed the mind of any student from my generation. It was always 'yes sir, no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am'. We ALWAYS paid rapt attention in class. And there was none of this hippity hop music with all that cursing either. And we wore our pants around our waist.

Anywho, the way children show disrespect is by using gestures using their fingers. It's called 'mewing'. There is NO WAY anyone from my generation would have ever countenanced the mere thought of using some gesture with their fingers to be disrespectful. How low we have sunk. Thanks Obama!

 
Maister said:
You read the headline correctly. It seems young students have now invented a new behavior which is taking the country's schools by storm: being disrespectful to their teachers! The thought of being anything other than respectful to one's teachers never would have crossed the mind of any student from my generation. It was always 'yes sir, no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am'. We ALWAYS paid rapt attention in class. And there was none of this hippity hop music with all that cursing either. And we wore our pants around our waist.

Anywho, the way children show disrespect is by using gestures using their fingers. It's called 'mewing'. There is NO WAY anyone from my generation would have ever countenanced the mere thought of using some gesture with their fingers to be disrespectful. How low we have sunk. Thanks Obama!

Click to expand...
I know you're being somewhat silly but the true disrespect that is directed at teachers these days is just awful. Their parents don't hold them accountable and most school districts don't either. The amount of good, experienced teachers that are leaving the profession in droves should be terrifying.
 
My mother is semi-retired, but works as a classroom aide on a part-time basis at an elementary school. The conduct she witnesses among the kids is frequently appalling. Throwing of objects, random noise outbursts, other dysregulated behavior, and the absence of any deference toward adults or willingness to listen to even basic commands. IMHO these kids simply do not have fear. I even see it more and more with my own kid, who's almost 7. The level of defiance blows me away.

There's also the effects of digital devices in classrooms on developing brains. I think we'll one day discover that the the reliance on devices as educational tools has scrambled these kids' executive function in a way that results in their eventual banishment from the classroom environment. Like a sort of educational Butlerian Jihad.
 
My mother taught in the 90s and got away as fast as possible. I can't imagine what it is like today.
 
Maister said:
You read the headline correctly. It seems young students have now invented a new behavior which is taking the country's schools by storm: being disrespectful to their teachers! The thought of being anything other than respectful to one's teachers never would have crossed the mind of any student from my generation. It was always 'yes sir, no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am'. We ALWAYS paid rapt attention in class. And there was none of this hippity hop music with all that cursing either. And we wore our pants around our waist.

Anywho, the way children show disrespect is by using gestures using their fingers. It's called 'mewing'. There is NO WAY anyone from my generation would have ever countenanced the mere thought of using some gesture with their fingers to be disrespectful. How low we have sunk. Thanks Obama!

Click to expand...
mad gran torino GIF
 
MD Planner said:
I know you're being somewhat silly but the true disrespect that is directed at teachers these days is just awful. Their parents don't hold them accountable and most school districts don't either. The amount of good, experienced teachers that are leaving the profession in droves should be terrifying.
Click to expand...
Joking aside, I wonder if there is any way to quantify the changes in levels of respect exhibited in the classroom? Anecdotally I know the level of hostility has definitely increased in public meetings over the past quarter century. I would imagine that while disrespect was going on in classrooms when we kids before the advent of the internet and social media, it has gotten orders of magnitude worse in recent years.
 
I don't get on Twitter much anymore, but there was a Canadian researcher named Paul Fairie. He would go back through clippings from the last 200 years and try to find the same sentiments from the past, predictions of the future, and just comical headlines.

A few common themes that stretch back at least a few hundred years:
  • Today's youth are destroying society or are too lazy
  • Independent women are destroying the family/society
  • Men these days aren't real men
  • No one wants to work anymore
  • Modern music is destroying society
  • Modern education is too easy

It gives better perspective to see people have been complaining about the same things for centuries.
 
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
 
Huh! Next thing you know they'll demand litter boxes to replace rest rooms. Little brats . . . .
 
bureaucrat#3 said:
It gives better perspective to see people have been complaining about the same things for centuries.
Click to expand...
Yes some of those things for sure. But it's WAY worse than it ever has been. Blatant disregard for rules, authority, physical attacks on teachers. It happens far more than is reported because most school systems try to keep those kinds of things under wraps.
 
MD Planner said:
Yes some of those things for sure. But it's WAY worse than it ever has been. Blatant disregard for rules, authority, physical attacks on teachers. It happens far more than is reported because most school systems try to keep those kinds of things under wraps.
Click to expand...
Yes. As the parent of an elementary school child, I think the dismissal of the pathologies present among the school aged population is rather glib. IMO the combination of smartphones, social media, and - in a complete break from the practice of every generation that preceded this one - the fact disciplining your kid via spanking or similar will land you a Child Protective Services visit. Again, these kids have no fear. Why should they? And many of the ones who aren't fearless instead have crippling levels of anxiety in what should be one of the most carefree phases of their lives. This is not normal.
 
Faust_Motel said:
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Click to expand...
Socrates, right?
 
Faust_Motel said:
Maybe. I didn't want to attribute it as my Googling suggests it's not really clear if it was Socrates or not. Probably wasn't Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, or Oscar Wilde though.
Click to expand...
I always heard it was Socrates, but then again, Socrates never wrote anything, and anything attributed to him had to come from his students, usually Plato.
 
Maister said:
I always heard it was Socrates, but then again, Socrates never wrote anything, and anything attributed to him had to come from his students, usually Plato.
Click to expand...
It really raises the question of how we are supposed to take Socrates' word on the poets and the arts when his teaching was conducted entirely in hypotheticals translated through fictional dialogues written by a student.
 
Back
Top