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In recent years, students have become progressively more disrespectful to their teachers.
What should be reprehensible has been normalized to such an extent that I, personally, have witnessed it in all of my classes everyday.
Students talking over the teacher, going on their phones in the middle of a lesson and disregarding their schoolwork is all commonplace in the classroom. It is blatantly rude towards the teachers who are taking time out of their day to help them learn.
This surge of insulting behavior was amplified by the covid-19 pandemic.
A poll by news outlet Gallup found that 45% of school aged children felt that their social skills worsened over the course of quarantine and continues to affect them even after the fact.
This seems pretty obvious as we were all restricted to mostly our homes where in person communication was scarce, especially with people around our age.
Students got bored cooped up in our homes, and in turn, more and more turned to social media to find some semblance of other people’s input.
Pew Research Center found that 46% of teens in 2022 said that they used the internet “almost constantly” in comparison to 24% of teens in 2014-15.
Since social media tends to be a hotbed of hypercritical people, it makes sense that impressionable young people would pick up on this.
As the 2021-22 school year rolled around, and kids were finally having a full in-person school year, there came a wave of social unawareness that changed the scope of school life as we know it.
We easily got away with not doing work during quarantine, and that transferred into in person work. What was seen as a requirement before is now, at best, flexible.
Saying inappropriate things like racial slurs and sexual terms in front of the teacher or even to the teacher themself is so normal that I myself become baffled by what others say.
Whatever housed the respect, or perceived respect, of one’s teacher has deteriorated and been replaced with apparent insulting behavior.
Obviously, a student is allowed to criticize or question the teacher, but they should take into account that the future will not be like high school.
Authority figures will not be nearly as lenient with late work or inappropriate rhetoric in real jobs. Teachers are giving students a break because they’re kids; you aren’t afforded that privilege in adulthood.
However, both teachers and bosses at your job offer an opportunity to develop as a person, whether that be socially or academically.
Students are having lessons handed to them, but are so enraptured by their phones that they disregard it.
Perhaps you’ll get away with being rude to your teachers now, but it’s preposterous to think that you’re doing the right thing.
Learn to be grateful, or at least respectful, to teachers.
