Respect In School
vs. rudeness
Treating others with honor and dignity
To practice Respect I will:
- Have consideration for those around me.
- Treat others as I would want to be treated.
- Be careful not to use offensive language.
- Honor my elders and my authorities.
- Not keep others waiting.
‘Respect Requires Empathy‘
– Bill Croskey
On Talk of the Nation (an NPR show) a while back, I heard an interview with an author named Henry Alford, who has written a book called Would It Kill You To Stop Doing That? He spoke about the need for etiquette, or what I prefer to call manners, in 21st Century America. His book gives examples of bad manners: the rider who sneezes in a crowded bus and manages to hit every passenger; people who cut into movie lines; or a person texting in the middle of a movie. He argues that good manners can be harder to define than bad ones. In the radio interview, he stated that it was poor manners to ask a physician how long s/he has been in practice; or to ask an attorney if one is being billed for a phone call; or to ask someone where they are from. (How was your score? I was 0 for 3!) He even has a remedy for what he calls being addressed with a pet name. “I think … what I would be tempted to do is to launch into what I call retaliatory manners, and that is to say, I would ‘hon’ a ‘hon,’ I would ‘doll face’ a ‘doll face.’”
