Is the phrase "disrespectful behaviour" a misnomer?

Emotionally, it always bothered me how little respect students have for their teachers. I do think people willing to get an undergraduate degree for such a difficult and underpaying profession generally deserve more respect than they get.

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On a more rational level, however, students are entitled to their disrespectful opinions; no one has the right to police the mind; and that creates a bit of a problem for the phrase "disrespectful behaviour." By the very definition of the words, respect or disrespect refer to people's attitudes, not to what they do about those attitudes, and I wouldn't claim to have the right to police the mind itself.

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Besides, true respect cannot be coerced, and any attempt at as much would only breed resentment, for the target of such coercion has no way of distinguishing coercion in the name of social order from coercion in the name of a teacher's feelings.

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The actionable part of what students do; namely, expressing those beliefs during class time in a manner that undermines ability to maintain order in the classroom (and frankly, in some cases, expressing them in ways that would among adults constitute assault), would be more accurately described as "uncooperative." As in, whatever you think of the teacher, that doesn't justify insulting them in a time and place that disrupts the learning that the taxpayers paid for, that the voting public voted for, and that some of one's classmates genuinely intended to receive.

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Should we move to calling it "uncooperative" instead? We can have multiple rungs of severity, such that we not conflate mildly-uncooperative behaviours with severely-uncooperative ones. Obviously we don't want to overzealously punish mild, polite forms of disobedience or anything like that. But clearly a word choice like "uncooperative" makes it just a little bit more obvious the school is on solid ground in punishing it, as opposed to "disrespectful," which at best is the same word choice used on reporters who too bluntly question politicians, and at worst could only foster further resentment by making students think of school administrators as the thought police...

Submitted June 14, 2023 at 01:53PM by Planet_Breezy https://ift.tt/aVgd5vL