The Way They Should Go

This past week, an editorial in the Paris-based newspaper Le Monde discussed one of the most debated components of the teaching profession – to be nice or not be nice.  Of course, when I began my career, I was told not to smile until Christmas.  The thought was it was much easier to grow nicer than to grow stricter.  However, what the article misses altogether and what I was missing at the beginning of my career was that notions of “mean” or “nice” are beyond the scope of the question and not relevant.  Instead, the question should be about being a teacher.

In the past, I’ve alluded to the words of German thinker Martin Buber and his concept that a teacher’s job is to instruct the adult they will become – not the teenager they are now.  Therefore, my approach is not to be polite or mean but to be professional and keep the long term in mind.  In general, I have deadlines and restrictions on re-takes and make-ups.  Most teachers do but in the application of such policies, I respond to situations as a professional.  I will extend latitude when common decency dictates that I should.  If a kid’s parent has been in the hospital all weekend, it is as a professional that I extend the deadline where other students are not afforded such consideration.  For the student, I’m not being nice (though I’m surely sympathetic) but practical.  It is unreasonable to expect a student to complete an assignment if their parent was in the hospital all weekend.  To enforce the policy is not a case of being strict, it is being a jerk.   

However, more likely is the case that a student comes to me and ask for an extension on an assignment and I say no.  Again, not extending the deadline is not a question of being mean – as Le Monde editorial seems to suggest.  The question I have to ask myself is what is being learned from my action.  If the student learns in the future, be it in my class or another class (or a job), that it is not good to turn things in late, then a life-long lesson has been internalized.  Like parents, it does not serve me (and certainly not the students) to allow a kid to arbitrarily miss deadlines.  To do so could lead to the student suffering after they’ve left school where the consequences are more severe and less forgiving.    

 

What is the extent of my “niceness?”  I often say that I’m friendly but refuse to be friends.  Many teachers seek to be friends with students.  Like parents, that serves no one.  I’m not there to be a friend but to be a teacher.  My ability to do what is best for the student can be easily compromised with personal feelings or attachments.  Still, I seek to be friendly.  It would be equally ridiculous to take an adversarial approach to students I have to deal with for 182 days.  Like a professional, the best you can make these relationships, the better the students will perform.   

Now, those who argue against this approach say such teachers do not care for their students and do not care about what is best for them.  Typically, when a person’s response to a point is an ad hominem attack, it is never a good sign.  I’ve been told that I don’t care and I don’t understand what they are going through.  I should try to “meet them where they are.”  Such thinking is naïve.  When a teacher acquiesces to a student’s excuses (extraordinary circumstances notwithstanding) or a student’s plea to avoid consequences, the teacher is cutting the student’s legs out from underneath them – crippling them as they head into a world that cares very little for them.   

So what is a teacher to do?  It is not to be nice for niceness sake.  It is not to be mean because a student should be able to expect a certain level of decency.  The teacher should be the dispassionate advocate for the adult the student will become.  If a teacher does their job correctly, that student will enter the world with maturity and confidence and will have the benefit of having a mentor who sought what was best for the long-run rather than doing what was easier in the short-term.