Dignity and Respect in the Classroom
Dear Diane,
I'll be in Chicago when you get this letter. But I'm writing it a week before—while news from Egypt is still up in the air, but democracy seems a less likely outcome every day.** But those who were involved had an experience, I suspect, that has forever changed them. If they survived, they have a sense of dignity, of having stood up to a bully and spoken their minds.
Somewhere recently I read an article which claimed that a study done across national borders showed that people, when offered liberty, freedom, and dignity as choices, picked dignity as the thing they wanted most. I thought that was interesting. Being treated with dignity is, I suspect, part of our natural aspiration as humans. And while it can be crushed, it can also be restored. My experience in schools that placed faculty, family, and student dignity above all else was reassuring. Students came to us without expecting that this was ever likely to be found in schools; families who had similar experiences at being disregarded, patronized, talked down to, and shut out of their children's school lives responded when schools changed, too. Not immediately, but over time.
The same is true for the adults who work in a school—from custodians to secretaries to paraprofessionals and