Of all the blogs we have completed, this has been the one I
fought, thought about, debated, wondered, and agonized over the most. At first, I thought, I’m not biased. My biases are about mean people which is
lame, but true. I even went to websites
to see where my biases are focused. I
went to www.tolerance.org and read about
test yourself for hidden biases. Next, I
tried to find some hidden bias tests which I took online, but they weren’t
specific enough to get me going. One
man’s list of “Freely Admitted Personal Biases as of April 2011” got me
thinking. I have a LOT of biases. In the end, a bias is your opinion about
something. It can be positive or negative. Most everything requires an opinion. So, I started a big list and I’m picking the
one that gets me mad to blog about today.
I am biased against the parents of kids that act up and are
disrespectful. I teach at the elementary
level. When a student comes in
consistently not paying attention, doing the opposite of what is asked,
interrupting others, making a scene, riling other students up, not using basic
manners, sassing, mumbling under their breath, thinking that they can do
whatever they want with a “what are you going to do about it” attitude I think
that child’s parents must not care about him/her at all. Until I get the paradigm shift after meeting
with the parents or finding out their story, I’m thinking many negative
thoughts about what on earth they think they’re doing by not disciplining their
child at home and not paying attention to him/her. I tried to decide if it matters if the child
is a boy or a girl, but I’ve had them both and I think I think the same for
both.
My thought is that now that we live in this generation of
entitlement from the children. That supposedly
your whole world should revolve around them.
So many parents aren’t sitting down with their children to teach them
the basics of being a decent human being or even just saying “No.” Poor John or Jane’s self esteem may suffer if
they don’t get their way. Yikes! I even get the attitude when a challenging
child has conferences and neither parent shows up that “that’s typical”. I think they don’t care. I think they’re jerks for not caring. Odd that at the onset, I’m blaming the parent
and think less of them for what I consider poor parenting and babying their
child so he/she can act like that. I’m
not making the child responsible either!
That pretty much makes me a jerk too.
I know this is something I do in my head so that makes me
conscious of it so I try to control how I handle that. (At least I hope I do). I’m
pretty sure that this comes from being the parent of three girls. We have worked really hard with our girls to
try to instill the values that we think are important in them. We have both given up a lot of our wants to either
provide for our girls or be there for them in school, at home, for their
activities….. We also have tried to teach them that they are a part of a
community of others, family, friends, groups and they should be looking outward
instead of selfishly inward. It gets
under my skin when I see things that make me think that other parents are
putting themselves first, even before teaching their kid to be a decent human
being.
Sounds pretty mean when I write it out like that. I guess I’m one of those mean people that
also made my bias list. (Sigh)
Hi Kim, thanks for your honesty. Is it fair that we judge parents for the behaviors of their kids? Maybe not, but I do it all the time. And isn't it funny that we can go either way with our judgments; for example, we can think, "Wow, those kids think they're so entitled! The parents shouldn't give them everything they want and make them center of the world," or "Wow, where are that child's parents? They must be selfishly doing their own thing, putting themselves first and ignoring their kids." In many cases, either of those thoughts might have some kernel of truth, and oddly can be applied as an explanation for the same bad behavior. You know what has me really curious? What will the CHILDREN of the super-entitled generation of kids be like? Will they be super-neglected? Or, will they step up and be the responsible respectful ones in their families? And here's the weird thing: I keep hearing about this "entitled generation" but yet I rarely see enough evidence of them to consider it a truly "generational" thing rather than just an individual kid thing. All of my friends' children are extremely respectful, grateful, caring, etc. So, I'm not really sure, from direct experience, that an actual "generation" of entitlement even exists...
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me like this "generation of entitlement" could be one of the intended products of our public school system. It's an outgrowth of the more general training in dependency and consumerism that our youth receive in schools. They're taught to look outside of themselves for everything. Essentially all the answers, all the decisions, all the directions, and all the ideas in their school lives come from external sources such as authority figures, television and computer screens, books, and loudspeaker systems. In such an environment students become addicted to external feedback. They're terrified of spending any time at all with their own inner selves. They never get a chance to learn who they are, because all their lives have been filled up by overwhelming external stimuli and all their time has been structured by machines. If the children could spend some unlimited time alone, learning who they are, we would see them becoming more mature and more capable in all aspects of their lives.
ReplyDeleteHi Kim, I enjoyed reading your post. I understand how you view this as a bias but I feel that it is more of a natural reaction from a parent that teaches her child values and respect. Yes, it is wrong to assume that it is always the parent's fault, but sadly I find that it often is. The sad thing is that I think most of these parents fail to realize how their parenting and lack of discipline effect teachers and the classroom. Sometimes it even seems like they think this behavior is cute and funny without acknowledging the problems children like this can create for those they are supposed to respect. I just think that we need to be careful in assuming anything about a child's home life because we will never know the full story. If we can acknowledge any biased feelings, we can prevent them from changing the way we treat the child or parents.
ReplyDeleteHi Kim, I can see where you perceive that your reaction is biased and yes, many times the behavior is isolated from the parents but most often not. So many students are being raised by a mediatized culture. Cable, Facebook and video games are taking entire families hostage and very few seem to be concerned enough to get rid of them. Mean people are emotionally draining when you are trying to teach. The assumption that these kids are entitled to do so is so much based on what you pointed out; people not wanting to take responsability for their actions and the behaviors they are bringing into society. There are cases where the attitude is a manifestation of an alternate condition... in which case we need to be able to use the existing resources to help kids that need that extra support.
ReplyDelete