Anyone who knows the professional and personal me understands the time and attention I spent helping students learn about mutual respect and consideration. Even kids who were sent to my office for poor choices knew they could redeem themselves by being honest about themselves and whatever situation had delivered them to my doorstep, as well as by referring to others with appropriate language. Honesty, integrity, and respect have always been cornerstones of what I value. They were the drivers behind my forty-six years as a teacher and administrator.
Those that know the professional and personal me would not be surprised when I recently forwarded a post on Facebook that basically wondered how some people question if our country is “ready” for a woman or gay or person of color as President, while never seeming to ask if we are ready for someone who is incompetent, vindictive, malicious, misogynistic, homophobic, etc. In response, I heard back from an older friend who asked me how I could speak so disrespectfully about an “elected president of our nation.” She wondered if I hate him so much that I could lower myself to showing that hate.
I considered not responding. I have plenty of affection for this woman and generally don’t believe that trying to engage in dialogue with someone who clearly sees things so differently can possibly be productive. Staying silent, however, would negate the infinite times I admonished children who had not stood up for what was right. I couldn’t let this one go and wrote back: “ With all due respect, when the current President of the United States starts speaking respectfully about women, gays, people with disabilities, immigrants, and pretty much everyone who is different from or differs with him, I will speak more respectfully. Yes, I detest him and what he makes very clear he stands for. There have been Presidents in the past with whom I did not agree and for whom I did not vote. I respected and appreciated the challenges of their position and the ways they treated that position with dignity and others with respect.”
In my classrooms and, later, the schools that I ran, I would not have tolerated any person who spoke about others as Trump does. Children, I granted time to learn and worked with them about expressing feelings and different opinions in respectful ways. Students were allowed some latitude in which to grow. If they didn’t get the picture pretty quickly, they were out. Had an adult in my employ ever referred to a student or a colleague or a parent in the blatantly sexist, racist, homophobic terms, that Trump uses so consistently, I would have fired that person immediately.
Bullying is a term that I believe is often exaggerated. To survive in this world, we all need to learn how to take a joke, and kids often tease each other without necessarily recognizing the power behind the words they use. A mother once told me that any time her daughter said, “I was just kidding!,” she would respond, “Who was it funny for?” What confounds me is how many adults ignore, excuse, or condone language and actions in the person who should exemplify tact and professionalism. A wise 7th grade boy asked me, in 2016, “Mrs. Glass, how can anyone hear what Donald Trump says and excuse it as “just words”? I didn’t have a satisfactory answer then, and I don’t have one now.
My question for those who excuse Trump’s rants as “just words”: Would you allow him to work for you? Would you hire him in whatever business you run? Would you want to be his colleague?
Glass Full 