Authentic Concern Versus Emotional CorrectnessNovember 19, 2014
I have talked recently (see “Witch-hunt“) about personal attacks and bad arguments. It dawned on me that I am often subject to two contradictory attacks. The first is that, by suggesting we listen to reason, look at evidence or attend to matters of factual accuracy, I am ignoring the emotional side of things. In effect, that I am a desiccated calculating machine, dryly weighing everything up without any feeling for what’s at stake.
However, at the same time, whenever I have referred to, say, feeling angry about children’s behaviour or disgusted at somebody’s unwise actions, I get attacked for hostility, intimidation or hatred.
What has gradually occurred to me is that this sort of thing is reminiscent of the “bisected teacher” phenomena that I described here. Those who sit in judgement will condemn teachers both for their feelings and their lack of feelings. This is because it is not emotion, or its lack, that is actually at issue. It is a willingness to comply only with the approved display of emotions. It is not about emotion, but about emotional correctness. It is the right sort of show of concern, not the genuine feeling of concern. Genuine emotions are, by contrast, messy and sometimes difficult to deal with. And often these are to be condemned.
Thinking about some of the ways teachers are supposed to express their concern and fondness for students in schools. The more sincere the feeling, or the more it treats children with some of the respect due to adults, the less it seems to be approved:
The following ways of displaying concern or fondness for your students are often not approved of:
- Being angry, particularly shouting, when their learning is disrupted or they are otherwise harmed by their peers;
- Expressing anger about disruptive or dangerous students to colleagues;
- Suggesting it is important for them to be high-achieving, academically;
- Being visibly disappointed when they fail or misbehave;
- Expression opposition to school policies that are not in their interests;
- Expecting them to work hard and follow rules;
- Designing lessons only for the sake of their learning;
- Respecting their privacy by letting them keep feelings and opinions to themselves;
- Letting them work alone rather than with students they don’t get on with;
- Objecting to the “inclusion” of students whose behaviour endangers and upsets other students;
- Punishing, as firmly as possible, those whose behaviour harms the interests of your students;
- Being honest to them, particularly regarding the consequences of their actions and the effect they are having on others.
The following behaviours, all either empty or potentially harmful, are very often encouraged as showing how much you care and like children:
- Letting them off of punishments, or not enforcing rules;
- Giving rewards that are not deserved;
- Deliberately trying to get them to like you, perhaps by making childish jokes;
- Lecturing colleagues for having the wrong attitude to children;
- Making lessons entertaining or relevant to what they are already interested in;
- Declaring how much you like them at every opportunity;
- Sympathising with their dislikes of particular subjects;
- Pretending to be happy in lessons;
- Lying to them to motivate them;
- Lowering expectations for particular individuals on the basis that you understand them and their needs;
- Pretending to be interested in latest popular culture phenomena;
- Refusing to let them know how they are doing relative to each other or to where they should be.
Perhaps, I am being overly harsh with some of those items. But I do often think that there is an image in our heads of what a teacher should be like that is closer to being the biggest, most popular, kid in the class rather than an expert advocate of our students’ true interests.