Civility.

So many people are frustrated or disappointed with young people today because they dress in poor taste, use offensive language and talk in code, dance suggestively and listen to terrible music. Let's face it though; every generation criticizes the generations that come after. I can live with bad music, underwear showing, and embarrassing dancing. I can even live with coarse language - heck, anyone who knows me knows I'm no stranger to the F-bomb! (sorry, mom)

What frustrates and disappoints me is the complete and utter lack of civility in the world today. Incivility crosses generational barriers - it's an epidemic that is eating away at all of us. When did it become okay to scream and yell at each other to "solve a problem?" When did kids get so belligerent to adults in charge? I'm guilty of swearing at a driver in front of me who is going too slowly or the guy behind whose bright lights are blinding me. I have to do self-talk and tell myself to relax and take a deep breath... it's not that big of a deal! But if it's not a big deal, why does it raise my blood pressure to begin with? Is it that we have become so wrapped up in our own schedules, our own problems, and our own little worlds that we really have no regard for other people?

What I have noticed is the slippery slope that is the lack of civility. Once a person disregards another and tears him to shreds, there is no going back. The next time the opportunity arises to do the same, that terrible beast comes out again. Anitra was reading an Eric Jensen book about remembering where impoverished students come from in our teaching and she read a passage about the need to teach kindness and courtesy in school - that we cannot assume students come to school knowing how to behave or knowing the importance of treating each other with respect and dignity. The problem I see is that many adults in our schools don't know the importance of treating each other (or their students) with the same respect and dignity they expect from their students.

One place incivility has become brutally evident is in cyberspace. The feeling of anonymity that comes with dressing someone down with a few keystrokes is contagious. Even when people are logged in under their own identity, there is something about not being able to see the other person's face that allows one person to verbally pummel another.

I don't know how to fix this problem except by modeling kind and decent behavior ourselves. Students need to see that we value treating all people with kindness and courtesy. We can only hope decency is contagious as well.

“When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.” ~Samuel Johnson