As noted previously, you can respond to your wilderness experience negatively or positively. Your choice will determine how you survive or thrive and how you will leave the island.
POSSIBLE NEGATIVE, DESTRUCTIVE RESPONSES:
Are you exhibiting any of the following behaviors or have you noticed them in your colleagues?
1. Negative attitude expressed in constant grumbling, murmuring, belly-aching, and complaining
2. Blaming your colleagues, administration, staff, or students (i.e., the “blame game”)
3. Shouting, harsh words, rudeness, insults, put-downs, or mean and nasty comments directed at colleagues, staff, or students
4. Shirking responsibilities by not attending meetings or appointments, disappearing for hours at a time, not being available to students and colleagues, and/or being late for class
5. Becoming hardened and bitter about what’s happening
These behaviors are self-destructive, plus they can make everybody around you miserable. You will drive people away. Further, it is total waste of an opportunity to improve yourself as a professional, as you tackle each challenge.
POSSIBLE POSITIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE RESPONSES:
Alternatively, do any of these behaviors ring a bell?
1. Positive attitude to see this experience as an opportunity to grow and mature, and, just maybe, become wiser and stronger
2. Perceive this experience as: “This is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency, it wouldn’t be taking so long!” It’s just another trial on your professional journey.
3. Persevere and move forward in spite of limitations, barriers, and set-backs
4. Release your creative juices to seek solutions with fewer resources, kinda like that classic scene from Apollo 13
5. Reassess your time management or take a time-management seminar so you can become more efficient at handling the increased number of tasks in less time
6. Be grateful you have a job where you still can do something you love, such as teach or write, or do research or clinical practice, or drive people nuts, or any combination of the preceding
This experience will test what you are really made of (“Yo, preposition boy! Stop ending sentences with you know what!” Sorry.). Your true character will reveal itself, perhaps to the surprise of you and the people with whom you work. Which self is that going to be? How will you exit this wilderness?
Let me know your reactions and any suggestions that can help others survive. We’re all in this academic metaphor together!
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
THE 7 HABITS
This series has addressed the following categories of offensive material:
1. PUT-DOWNS
2. SARCASM
3. RIDICULE
4. SEXUAL CONTENT AND INNUENDO
5. PROFANITY
6. VULGARITY
7. SENSITIVE PERSONAL ISSUES AND TRAGEDIES
There’s been a lot of reaction to these topics on the LinkedIn higher education groups. Since most professionals do not systematically consider these categories and the consequences of offending people in their daily conduct in the classroom or workplace, I hope that some of the content, examples, and guidelines in my blogs and the healthy discussion of these topics will generate some thought on WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE.
The consequences of disregarding my OFFENSIVE ALERT can be devastating to your students and your co-workers. Remember: This is all about them, not you.
If you are serious about making this work, you need to consider a pre-emptive strike to set standards everyone can accept before you or your students offend someone.
SHOULD YOU MIRANDIZE YOUR STUDENTS OR CO-WORKERS?
This blog level one head conjures up the mental image of a Shawshankian line-up of our students or co-workers facing a wall, with their hands up and feet spread, as they’re read their rights on what offensive content is out-of-bounds in the classroom or workplace. While some you may be drooling at the idea of executing such a sweep, I don’t recommend it for two reasons:
1. It may be difficult to find a clear wall long enough without pictures of dead past deans or college presidents on it.
2. That’s probably not the best approach to get these people to buy in to these rules of behavior or conduct for their learning or work environment.
The final blog in this series will proffer specific guidelines for executing a pre-emptive strike against offensive material in your classroom and workplace. It’s almost over.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
FACULTY ALERT: There doesn’t seem to be a ceiling on offensive material in our culture. As I plod through the muck and mire of the different categories of this material, please do not lose sight of the perspective on these issues. The decision of not to use offensive jokes, music, videos, and other media in the classroom does not hinge on your preferences about this material; it’s all about the effects of that material on your students and classroom atmosphere. It’s about them, not you. Your classroom should facilitate learning, not shut it down. These categories of offensiveness apply to everyone in the class.
SARCASM
Welcome to sarcasm-land! What a delightful way to begin this week: A blog on sarcasm with an opening sarcastic statement!
BLOGGER CONFESSION: Yup, I’m guilty of the transgression of sarcasm in my classroom, workplace, and home. I regret every time I used it under the guise of humor. The consequences were not worth it. Further, sarcastic remarks to students are a surefire recipe for disaster in their ratings of teaching at the end of semester. I can’t think of one reason to justify the use of sarcasm. DON’T DO IT!
DESCRIPTION: A sarcastic remark is frequently just another form of the ever popular put-down. Some people often perceive sarcasm as a sign of intellectual wit or as an elite verbal art form, even when the comment is directed at them as a put-down. Sarcasm “always has an edge; it sometimes has a sting.” It is usually cutting, caustic, biting, derisive, sneering, harsh, sardonic, or bitter. In sports, coaches use it to taunt, deflate, scold, ridicule, and push athletes to perform.
What makes sarcasm so dangerous is that it is spontaneous. It’s highly risky, because it’s difficult to control comments that come out of our mouths so quickly. If the result is negative and directed at one of your students, your administrative assistant or another staff member, or a colleague, the consequences can be so hurtful and damaging that the victim may not recover from the wound for a long time. You could lose a student or colleague for the entire semester or eternity.
RESEARCH: Research on sarcasm in the college classroom indicates that its intent is almost always negative and it is used most frequently by male professors. A few faculty members who regularly use negative sarcasm have asked me whether there is any way to justify or rationalize its use in the classroom. Read my letters: N O!
If you’re not sure of its effect, check out the sarcasm (and other put-downs) on House, Two and a Half Men, Modern Family, NCIS, and Law & Order: SVU.
My next blog kicks up the nastiness notch to ridicule, designed to humiliate students and others in the workplace. Most of these forms of humor are at someone’s expense, but not our own. We protect ourselves at all costs.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
PUT-DOWNS
Ya gotta love ‘em. Most everybody does it. The put-down may be the most ubiquitous form of humor. Everywhere we look, from Leno to Conan (Where ever you are!) to Letterman, to images of professionals on sitcoms, to colleagues, and even to our closest friends and our families, the put-down is inescapable.
Check out the regular insults spewed by Dr. Gregory House (played by Hugh Laurie) at his colleagues, boss, associates, and patients on House. Lawyer Denny Crane (played by William Shatner) on the now defunct, but great, TV series Boston Legal was just as insensitive in his put-downs of racial and religious groups and people with physical disabilities.
DISPARAGEMENT HUMOR: Tendentious or disparagement humor belittles an individual or group that has been victimized, or that has suffered some misfortune or act of aggression. Sometimes it is rather harmless in the context of kidding around or teasing; at other times it can be mean, cruel, and hurtful, albeit a powerful weapon for verbal abuse. Freud believed this to be an important function of humor, allowing people to express aggressive and hostile feelings in a “socially acceptable” manner. There is even research evidence that people enjoy put-downs more when they have negative attitudes toward the victim.
Although there may be a time and a place for put-down humor, such as in those over-advertised videos of Friar’s Club Celebrity Roasts emceed by the late Dean Martin and others, the classroom is definitely not the place. Even recent versions of those roasts have become mean-spirited, profane, and vulgar.
HIGHER EDUCATION EXAMPLES: In higher education as elsewhere, the perpetrator is usually in a superior position in the organizational food chain compared to the victim. Since the victim, which is often the student, administrative assistant, TA, RA, or lower rank colleague, is already in a vulnerable position, the put-down by a lofty faculty member or dean can be devastating. This behavior is part of the bullying mentality and incivility in the workplace that is on the rise.
In the classroom and department, a faculty put-down may be followed by the words, “I was just joking” or “I was only kidding.” This is the typical “redeeming” strategy to get the faculty member off the hook for the direct hit (aka put-down insult). It never does redeem and never will. Anyone who does that should be reprimanded.
SPECIFIC TARGETS TO AVOID: I suggest you avoid the following specific targets of put-downs in all forms of media in the classroom and workplace:
• Popular, entertainment, or political personalities
• Race, ethnicity, culture, nationality, gender, religion, or sexual orientation
• Physical characteristics (e.g., fat, thin, short, tall, blonde, pregnant, bald, or all of the preceding)
• Physical disabilities or handicaps
• Mental handicaps or illnesses
Also, don’t even think about these put-downs of your students, administrative assistant, TA, RA, and colleagues.
ALTERNATIVE HUMOR: Creating humor that builds your students up rather than tearing them down is not easy. However, yielding to the temptation to tear down can produce the negative consequences described previously.
Are you having fun yet? Next topic is sarcasm, which is almost as much fun as put-downs. What do you think about these issues? Have you had experiences you would like to share? Please comment.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
IMPACT ON STUDENTS (continued)
My previous blog listed 6 possible negative effects of offending any student in your class. So what’s the impact?
DISCONNECT: Does the word disconnect come to mind? It should. It's the paragraph head. Those emotional effects can squash a student’s motivation and spirit. More importantly, a single offensive comment can irreparably damage your relationships with those offended students. If collaborative learning activities are an integral part of your teaching repertoire, that collaboration could be uncomfortable or impossible based on the offensive remarks you made to any student. That student may intentionally avoid you to minimize the chance of confrontation. This is an individual issue in each offense because what is offensive to one student may not be offensive to other students.
CONNECT: The aforementioned negative effects of offensive media content are exactly the opposite of the positive effects to accrue from many of the uses of media in the first place. One primary purpose of humor, music, and videos is to improve relationships and connections by leveraging content and media to which students can relate. For example, nonoffensive humor and media content can break down barriers, relax, open up, and reduce stress, tension, and anxiety to foster connections between you and your students. It can grab and maintain the students’ attention and ability to focus or refocus on a particular point.
BEST TEACHERS: Furthermore, consider the characteristics of the “best teachers.” Use of offensive material is inconsistent with some of the affective character attributes of effective teachers, such as sensitivity, caring, understanding, compassion, and approachability.
MAJOR CATEGORIES OF OFFENSIVE CONTENT
In the humor research literature, joke types usually fit the following themes: superiority, aggression, hostility, malice, derision, cruelty, disparagement, stupidity, sex, and ethnic put-downs. Is there anything positive or nonoffensive in that list? I don’t think so.
The problem is that these themes are also prominent in music, movies, music videos, YouTube, and other media products that we could potentially use in our classroom as teaching tools. For example, some music, videos, and comedy with big name performers carry warning labels of “Adult Content.” These media have become increasing risqué by attacking and maligning the police, women, and political and “establishment” figures and issues. They are also chock full of obscenities, profanities, vulgarity, and other crude and explicit language.
I’ve identified seven major categories of offensive content: (1) put-downs, (2) sarcasm, (3) ridicule, (4) profanity, (5) vulgarity, (6) sexual content and innuendo, and (7) sensitive personal experiences. This material appears in jokes, music lyrics, and video content.
My future blogs will address those 7 categories.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
WHAT IS OFFENSIVE?
Definition: It seems that we should know what is offensive when we see or hear it. We do, but it’s not that simple. Any medium that offends is based on an individual, subjective interpretation. Consider this definition:
Any word, object, or action that violates a person’s values, moral principles, or norms of behavior is offensive.
The operative word here is VIOLATION. A significant violation is what offends. The determination of that violation is very personal. You can not take a vote in your classroom and determine by a majority what is offensive to your students or not. It’s an individual, reflexive reaction. Ah, the plot thickens. Therein lies the difficulty of determining teaching material that could be offensive.
Examples: An example of violation is sexist jokes. They offend feminists because they stereotype and degrade women. Racist or ethnic humor offends people who are strongly committed to the principles of human dignity. Belching and other bodily sounds in comedies such as Shrek, The Nutty Professor, and Doctor Doolittle 2 offend many adults because such noises violate propriety; other adults and children find such behavior hilarious.
The level of attachment or commitment to principles may determine whether the medium is offensive. A violation of others, such as put-downs, does not produce as strong an attachment as a violation of oneself. Disparaging and vulgar lyrics about women in rap music and videos would constitute a personal violation to women. Lyrics, dialogue, and jokes at the expense of other people are more acceptable to performers than spewing put-downs of themselves. Why? Because they are much more committed to their own dignity and comfort than that of others.
IMPACT ON STUDENTS
When a student is offended by something we say, do, or present, he or she experiences this personal violation. What emotional effects are manifested from this offense? It can produce the following negative effects:
• Withdrawal
• Resentment
• Anger
• Tension
• Anxiety
• Turning off/tuning out
If we are offended by something we see on TV, in the movies, or at a concert and exhibit those reactions, we can turn it off or walk out. Our students have no where to go if they're offended by a YouTube clip we showed in class. They have to come back to class over and over again as they fester anger and resentment toward you. Quite possibly, you have lost those students for the semester and may not even be aware it.
My next blog will examine those responses further and suggest a few guidelines for minimizing the chances of these problems from occurring.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
