All Posts Tagged With: "respect"

What does respect mean?

April 24th, 2011 • Todd Pettigrew

Students and professors may not agree.

Recently, I came across this remarkable essay by Ellen Smith. Smith takes note of a study done at Memorial University, a study reporting that the number one thing students want in a professor is that the professor be respectful. I, always on the lookout for ways to be a better professor was intrigued, and then confused, and then despondent.

Intrigued because it seemed like a unique insight into the mind of the student. Confused because I quickly realized that I don’t really know what students mean when they say they want respectful professors. Despondent because it occurs to me that what the students mean by respectful, is not what I would mean by the same term.

When students say they want a professor who is respectful, I have a feeling they mean a professor who makes their lives easier. When the students who responded to that survey said “respectful” was what they were looking for, I think they were thinking along these lines:

Because my professor respects me, he will let me have as many extensions on this paper as I ask for.

Because my professor respects me, he will not assign too many hard readings. He knows I’m busy with work and my social life, and besides, I have other courses to work on, too.

Because my professor respects me, he will understand that he is the expert in this field, not me, and so won’t expect me to do to much on my assignments.

Not all students are the same, of course, but none of these hypotheticals is groundless — I have heard all of these sentiments expressed in one form or another over the years. Moreover, I suspect that this is the model of respect that Smith has in mind:

As an undergrad, I put myself through school waiting tables – a truly humbling experience that made me a better instructor. With a mission of 100% customer satisfaction and my livelihood on the line, the patron’s experience became my highest priority.

Taking that mindset into the classroom, I strove for 100% student satisfaction – within the confines of academic integrity, of course – and achieved great results. It turns out, oddly enough, that students love feeling important, valued, respected, and honored. And through the resulting faculty-student connection, students willingly transform into vessels of learning.

So, for Smith, respect is part of the customer-service model of higher education where student satisfaction is the highest goal and academic integrity gets only a passing nod. But, as perhaps Smith would concede, satisfying the student and meeting the demands of academic integrity are very often at odds. Academic integrity says students should only pass a course when they have demonstrated a reasonable mastery of the material; not all students achieve this mastery, and yet every student wants to pass. Indeed, every student wants as high a grade as possible — I have never yet had a student complain that her grade to was too high — and yet academic integrity says we must give grades according to the quality of the work done.

And so if being satisfied is the measure of feeling respected, many students are bound to find their professors disrespectful.

But what if respect for students was really taken seriously? What if respect for students meant assuming from the outset that every student was smart, and motivated, and willing to work hard? The vision of a respectful professor would be very different then:

Because my professor respects me, he will hold me to reasonable deadlines.

Because my professor respects me, he will assign challenging readings and will structure the course such that I can only succeed by doing those readings and considering them carefully.

Because my professor respects me, he does not presume to be smarter or better than me, only that he knows more about this discipline than I do. Therefore, he will not dumb down course content because I am just an undergraduate. Rather, he will set high standards for me and expect me to meet them.

I’m sure there are a few students who think of a respectful professor this way, and if you are one of them, you should be proud of yourself. In the long run, ironically enough, you will probably be more satisfied.

The day I left class

November 29th, 2010 • Todd Pettigrew

I understand if students don’t have enough respect for me to pay attention, but they at least ought to have enough respect for themselves.

Two Ryerson profs created more waves than they probably meant to recently when they decided that they would simply stop teaching and leave class if things became too rowdy. Critics seem to take the view that while their concerns may be valid, there must be a better way.

As a professor, I am particularly sympathetic to the plight of the Ryerson Two, since I know first hand how soul-destroying it can be to do everything you can to be engaging about a fascinating topic and still watch students pass notes back and forth or try to make their cell phone spin like a top. I have never walked out for the reasons cited by the Ryerson profs. The most I’ve ever done on that score is stop teaching, walk over to an offending quartet and tell them quietly that they were causing a distraction. This was so mortifying to all of us that it was never needed again. But then, my classes are fairly small compared to those at most universities, and I can easily stroll over a few steps and correct the behaviour of a few students. But I wouldn’t want to climb the stairs to the back of a big lecture hall to tell off dozens of malcontents.

But one day I did walk out.

I had just graded a pile of papers so that I could hand them back in class. There were nine papers in the pile and of those nine, three of them had been blatantly plagiarized. And they were not the only ones that year. I had had enough and felt like I had to do something to convey to my students how serious the problem was. So I went into class and gave a very stern lecture about why plagiarism was wrong, about how it was an insult to me, to other students, and to the academy in general. Plus it was stupid because a bunch of them now had zeroes on their papers.

And then I left.

I don’t know what was said in the room after I was gone, but I’m pretty sure it made an impression. A student later told me that everyone in the class was now “paranoid” about citing sources correctly, which, in a way, was what I wanted because what they viewed as paranoid was merely what I considered diligent.

My case, of course, was something different than what the Ryerson profs are doing (or said they would do). It was a one-time thing, not a regular policy, and it was designed to make a particular point to the students, to actually teach them something. In that case, I felt like I could teach them more by leaving than I could by staying.

Looking back, I’m not entirely sure whether I did the right thing. There was no more misuse of sources that year, but when evaluations came around, it became clear that a lot of students were hurt because they felt they were being yelled at because of what other students did. No doubt some Ryerson students feel the same way about their profs walking out. And how much less will they learn because they no longer feel like they are being treated fairly?

Of course, it should never have had to come to that, and it should never have come to this. Students should pay attention for the simple reason that they should be embarrassed not to.

Each year, I talk to my students about my expectations around behaviour in class, including refraining from using their phones and laptops instead of paying attention. The reason I usually give is that it provides a distraction — not just to them but to other students and to me as well. But next year, I’m going to give another reason why students should pay attention: because anything else is beneath them. They are university students, for whom thousands of dollars of theirs (or their parents) and the taxpayers’ money is being spent so they can be there and to learn. They seek a university degree, a centuries-old designation, and a time-honoured mark of the educated man or woman. To do anything but pay attention is gormless and infantile.

I understand if students don’t have enough respect for me to pay attention, but they at least ought to have enough respect for themselves.

A Fond Farewell to Bush

January 16th, 2009 • Alexander Herman

A (more than slightly tangential) continuation from yesterday’s post:  Has it been eight years already? It feels like just yesterday when I was bemoaning the new, anti-intellectual president elect from Texas. Time flies, it seems, when you have a focus for your hatred. But now that Bush, by the time of this printing, will already be [...]

A (more than slightly tangential) continuation from yesterday’s post: 

Has it been eight years already? It feels like just yesterday when I was bemoaning the new, anti-intellectual president elect from Texas. Time flies, it seems, when you have a focus for your hatred. But now that Bush, by the time of this printing, will already be gone, to make way for the commencement of a new era, I’ll kind of miss him. He had that rare ability to unite people – even though he was uniting those who opposed him. Yet, if not for him, I would never have marched alongside wild radicals with whom I otherwise have little in common. At the great world-wide protest against the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, I met vegan farmers, girls with rainbow-coloured hair who wore ponchos and moccasins, and extremist Maoists, who called themselves “Spartacists” and advocated a simple, proletarian life for all. Had it not been for the foreign policy of Mr. Bush, I would never have come across these colourful – and eccentric – people. The assumed evil of the Bush Doctrine also gave me hope in the somewhat moribund system of the United Nations. For those of us opposing the Iraq War, the UN was given a hallowed, almost infallible, position – notwithstanding the fact that, through the Oil For Food Program, it had been partly complicit in helping certain states gain great financial benefit from the status quo of Saddam Hussein’s regime. I also found heroic the anti-American actions of countries (France, Russia, Turkey) who otherwise have far from admirable foreign policies. And, finally, I found a certain poignancy in the somewhat maudlin and misleading filmmaking of Michael Moore. For these reasons, I must thank George Bush. It is also necessary to correct certain misconceptions – or, shall we say, misunderestimations. The predominant one is that he was not intelligent. Most of us assumed this, not necessarily from his policies, but rather from his infamous linguistic missteps during speeches. In fact, these laughable proclamations became the primary evidence for disagreeing with his political decisions. We asked: “How can someone who sounds so dumb ever develop smart initiatives?” Yesterday, I referenced the recent BBC compilation of a list of well-known Bushisms. Reading it over, I couldn’t help but feel a certain admiration for the frankness and creativity of his language. After eight years of listening to this man, I’ve developed an ear for his cadence, as well as his somewhat Byzantine message. Here are some of the most beloved utterances of the now-former President, along with some of my own explanations as to their possible meaning: “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?” (January, 2000)If we consider “our children” not as the plural of “our child,” but rather as a category unto itself, the noun then becomes singular. In the same way, one could say: “We are asking the right questions in the following domains: war, the environment, our children, social security, etc.” “I understand small business growth. I was one.” (February, 2000)In the business community, many owners often associate themselves as symbiotically connected to the business which they founded. “It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.” (May, 2000)This, I presume, is a joke. Just think, if Obama had said a similar thing (albeit not in these trying economic times) with a characteristically straight-faced delivery, the media would have been rolling in the press room aisles. “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” (September, 2000)A good thing to say in any fishing community. Just think of Harper in the Maritimes. It’s sort of like him saying, “The executive must contemplate the best method to balance the interests of the local fishermen, including the possible need to diversify the economy of the region, as well as supporting a generalized moratorium on cod fishing, since, we must think of generations to come and their likely reliance on the same supply.” “They misunderestimated me.” (November, 2000)He gets a lot of flack for this one. But it’s quite an ingenious neologism: had he simply said “They underestimated me,” the term would be vague and rather clichéd. But by “misunderestimated,” we can understand that his detractors did not merely think little of him, but what little they thought was done for the wrong reasons. Ie. Over eight years, we have not only underestimated Bush, but also misplaced that underestimation by thinking him a simpleton when, in fact, he was – in his own way – a genius. “I think war is a dangerous place.” (May, 2003)Like a great poet, the President combines the tough reality of war with a geographical location (“place”). Is it not true that war must necessarily take place in a place? Lesser minds would overlook this connection. “The ambassador and the general were briefing me on the – the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice.” (October, 2003)This is a simple example of a quote taken out of context. We have a number of characters involved (ambassador, general, the majority of Iraqis and the terrorists). This likely came at the end of a long passage focusing on the terrorists. Thus, even though he has mentioned the majority of Iraqis in the previous sentence, any listener would know that “these people” refers to those mentioned in the central thrust of the speech, the terrorists. “I’m the decider, and I decide what is best.” (April, 2006)A perfect, pithy description of executive power. “You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.” (September, 2006)True. I hope this gloss has helped enrich our appreciation of the man who led the world’s most powerful country over the last eight years. Perhaps, for his expansion of English vocabulary and syntax, we owe him our grudging respect. 

Unfortunately, this may pale in comparison to his less-forgivable errors: the cynicism with which he reneged on Kyoto, the stupidity with which, based on dubious intelligence reports, he invaded Iraq, and, worst of all, the way he interpreted a miniscule electoral victory to allow the full-throttle imposition of neo-conservative policies and cabinet personalities. However, it must be added, had the eight years under Bush not been so desperate, Barack Obama may never have galvanized the support necessary to propel him into the Oval Office.

(These thoughts are all my own – well, at least those I don’t share with the the outgoing US President – and certainly don’t necessarily reflect those of my co-authors, Paul Matthews and Andrew Feindel.)