Disillusioned Teacher Says His Job Is Making Him 'Hate People'
After what he has experienced in his classroom, he may have good reason to.
Elnur / Shutterstock It’s no secret that teachers are struggling more and more with their jobs. Nearly every day, there is a new educator speaking out about what makes their job so difficult — from poorly behaved and disrespectful students to a lack of literacy and over-involved parents.
One teacher said he is losing respect for his students and beginning to “hate people” in general after a disheartening experience he had in the classroom.
A teacher had difficulty finding the good side of humanity after his students laughed at a serious video.
The anonymous teacher took to Reddit to share the unsettling experience. “Showed a video of a girl talking about the horrible things she witnessed before escaping North Korea, starving children and her family dying,” he wrote.
Clearly, this teacher was discussing a very somber subject matter with his students, and he expected them to react appropriately. They didn’t.
“My on-level class thought it was hilarious,” he said. “They laughed and laughed about it.”
“They have no empathy or regard for life,” he concluded sadly.
While this teacher’s experience is unfortunate, it’s not an isolated one.
Fellow teachers commented on the Reddit post, sharing their own stories of students acting disrespectfully towards subjects that deserve reverence.
“I do an entire unit on suicide and stigma,” one shared. “I go home every day feeling defeated because the kids laugh, make jokes.”
"I’ve experienced the same thing when teaching my students about genocides," another user wrote. "It especially hurt when I taught about a genocide my ancestors experienced and got those kinds of responses."
One Reddior recounted an appalling experience they had as a student. “I remember when I was in middle school, we had a Holocaust survivor guest speaker. One of the kids asked her what the tattoo on her arm was and if she was in a gang or something?” they said. “Kid definitely knew what it was. They all had a laugh, and she cried.”
Inappropriate laughter may actually be a normal response for some people.
The NPR and Kaiser Health News podcast "The Pulse" examined the phenomenon of inappropriate laughter. “Many people react that way when confronted with intense situations,” they said.
Psychology professor Margaret Clark said, “We think it … has to do with regulating your own emotions.”
According to The Pulse, “Nervous laughter or ‘happy-crying’ serve to achieve a kind of emotional homeostasis similar to the body’s producing sweat to cool off when overheated ... For some people, their bodies involuntarily try to regulate happy or sad emotions by expressing an opposite reaction.”
Based on this information, laughing at an inappropriate time may be a natural reaction from the body. However, the fact still remains that children are doing this in large groups and even cracking jokes about these serious subjects. Some of them may simply be victims of nervous laughter, but it is difficult to believe they all are.
And, certainly, students who choose to actively make jokes about something so sobering are not blameless.
There may be another answer as to why students are acting this way.
According to a survey conducted by Ipsos for Character.org, 90% of parents today believe that children do not treat others with respect, and 83% say kids only care about themselves. The same survey reported that 88% of parents think civility in the U.S. is decreasing.
While it’s natural to want to believe the best of everyone, it is conceivable that the real reason students are showing disrespect when faced with tough subject matters is because they are just that — disrespectful.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news, and human interest topics.