We are responding to the offensive nature of Mitch Dorr’s recent Coach’s
Corner
column We have robbed our
kids of common respect.
Mr. Dorr, as graduates of Cook County High School and former students, we reject several of the article’s basic premises, on the grounds that you dismiss our generation as a complete moral loss. As young people, we feel disrespected by your gross generalizations. Perhaps the reason you feel young people today are not giving elders the respect they deserve is because you are not receiving that respect personally, for a variety of reasons. Don’t get us wrong. The position of teacher, by nature, demands respect. However, even as degenerate young people, we know that respect is not necessarily awarded with age or position. It has to be earned, and can easily be lost. In addition, respect breeds respect. It’s not rocket science. If you treat people with respect, they will treat you with respect as well.
In our experience, your classroom was not a respectful environment. You were so outspoken in your own beliefs and political affiliations that, as a consequence, many students didn’t feel comfortable contradicting you as the teacher. In your column, you address how parents should spend more time trying to instill respect for others in their children. However, as a teacher, you fail to set an example in your classroom, which is an important place where young people learn how to interact with elders and people in positions of authority. The only examples of respect for others that we saw in your classroom came from the characters on the hit television show, West Wing,
Coach Boone from the film Remember the Titans,
and the prison inmates from Shawshank
Redemption.
Perhaps you should ask yourself, do you truly deserve respect? Does the fact that you’re older than your students automatically give you the right to demand respect from them, even while you fail to give them any other reason to respect you? Thereal question is, are you after true respect, or is what you are looking for just blind obedience?
If you want to instill your students with true respect, you should spend less time ranting about it in your column, and spend more time creating a classroom environment that fosters respect for all, by all.
So, in the degenerative voice of our disrespectful generation, your column, like…sucks.
Elliot Doherty Noyce
Kelly Schoenfelder
Marybeth LaVigne Wilkes
Grand Marais
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