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
RIDICULE
DESCRIPTION:It doesn’t get any nastier. Ridicule may be a jest that makes fun of someone sportively or good-humoredly, but usually it is intended to humiliate. It may consist of words and actions, such as scornful or contemptuous laughter. It is usually mean spirited and malicious, and may include sarcasm or other derisive, taunting, or jeering comments. Motives for and functions of this type of insult-humor may range from the actual expression of hostility to self-deprecation to ironic reversal, where the insult is turned around and used against the attacker.
EXAMPLES: In the popular comedy Meet the Parents, the character Greg Focker (played by Ben Stiller) was ridiculed throughout the movie by several hostile members of his fiancée’s family for being a male nurse and, at the end of the movie, for his real first name, Gaylord (“Gay Focker”).
Comedian, composer, author, and producer Mel Brooks describes the power of ridicule in his smash Tony-award winning Broadway musical The Producers. (Note: Brooks also produced movies with the same title preceding and succeeding the show.) In an interview on 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace (April 5, 2001), Brooks noted that the greatest form of revenge he could execute against Adolph Hitler is ridicule:
"How do you get even with him [Hitler]? There’s only one way to get even. You have to bring him down with ridicule…. If you can make people laugh at him [Hitler], then you’re one up on him. It’s been one of my lifelong jobs to make the world laugh at Adolph Hitler."
Brooks did just that in the show’s signature production number, “Springtime for Hitler.”
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS: Any personal characteristic can be held up to ridicule. A foreign accent, a lisp, a stutter, an unusual gesture, and a physical disability represent common targets. For example, one of the lawyers on the defunct TV series Boston Legal, Jerry Espenson (played by Christian Clemenson, who was promoted to M.E. on CSI: Miami), had a condition known as Asperger’s Syndrome (a form of autism). In numerous episodes, he was ridiculed repeatedly by his colleagues and clients for his awkward and strange physical symptoms.
BOTTOM LINE: Ridiculing a student in the classroom or a faculty or staff member in a meeting to embarrass or humiliate that person is inexcusable. Be sensitive to unusual physical characteristics and disabilities. Try to understand their source and resist every temptation to ridicule them.
Next, I move on to sexual content and innuendo. Isn’t it amazing that blog time and words are being spent on these topics in an effort to raise your consciousness level about how you teach? Unless you’re willing to make mistakes like I did, your sensitivity to offensiveness needs to be fine-tuned, and, even then, you’ll probably offend. It is a constant battle with which I still struggle in my presentations. I hope these examples and descriptions are helpful.
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
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
