Not in the mood for rude and crude

September 27, 2002
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Tomi Parrish, Faculty Adviser

Section: Opinions

Rude, crude and socially unacceptable.

Oh, wait. Excuse me. This is 2002, not 1962, and rudeness appears to have become the norm rather than the exception – in other words, socially acceptable and widely practiced.

I guess I’ve been lucky. I don’t encounter really rude people on a daily basis, but I and many of my colleagues in teaching have observed that rudeness is, indeed, becoming more pervasive in the classroom. It’s also becoming a more frequent topic of discussion at informal faculty gatherings.

Once upon a time, students respected their teachers for the position they held, if for no other reason. Rarely did a student question class requirements, insist that the teacher was wrong or unfair, curse the teacher or publicly harass the teacher in any way. Those conversations, instead, were held in the privacy of faculty offices and with the understanding that such discussions were privileged.

Once upon a time, most people had enough conscience and heart to give others the benefit of the doubt, to show respect to their elders and to authority (for the most part), to hold doors for others, to smile at strangers and to consider the importance of others’ feelings and opinions.

Not so today.

For example:

Last year, a local public school student called the teacher a bitch, to her face. The child, only 9, was suspended and showed no remorse for the remark.

Instead, the child was happy, mind you, to be “free” from school for a few days. (I’m happy to say that it wasn’t my child who did this.)

This summer, my husband and I were delivering a freshly painted Pacer rack to the UC and had to drive onto the patio to make the delivery.

As we were driving back across the patio and sidewalk to the street, three young women were walking toward us, right in the middle of the only access spot to the street.

They did not move over, even though they could have, nor did they speed up to help us on our way. They meandered, in fact, as slowly as they could and stared at us the entire time as though we were somehow criminals for being in their space.

Employees at a local business told me recently that they cannot use the words “I’m sorry” when speaking to customers because of the liability issue.

Other UTM professors have said that students are talking more during lectures, when they should be listening, and that threats have had to be employed to control classes.

E-mail, Internet, pagers and cell phones also have invaded the classroom. Those of us who teach in computer labs are forced to tell people now that e-mail and Web surfing must wait until lecture is over. And everyone has seen the effect of cell phones on society, on the road and off.

What happened to the Golden Rule? You don’t have to embrace Christianity to embrace the concept that others are as important as you; just be humane and compassionate and think about it.

Life doesn’t involve each of us being first or living by the “my way or the highway” rule. It’s just as easy to treat others as you would like to be treated as it is to treat others as you have been treated.

And why shouldn’t we say “I’m sorry,” “thank you,” “excuse me,” “please” or any of the other courteous phrases we allegedly were taught as children?

Kindness, fairness and generosity do not make you weak and ineffective. They make you a nice person to be around, someone who will draw others to you.

Rudeness should not be an acceptable form of behavior, socially or otherwise.

Let’s ditch our attitudes and play nice -- please.

It really is easier.

Tomi McCutchen Parrish is an instructor of Communications and faculty adviser to The Pacer.