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realpolitik: politics based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations (origin, German for, “practical politics”)
– Compact Oxford English Dictionary
By Cindy Reitzi
Former students of mine have complained that when the class was too boisterous I was “too nice.” Of course, their idea of quieting the class was to loudly yell, “Shut up!” or “Shut your pie hole” when their patience reached critical mass. Personally, I’d rather not “calm the masses” that way. Students say things that I, as a polite, mature role model, don’t say in public arenas. Part of my job is to help socialize students to communicate appropriately as young adults in civilized public life or, minimally, to teach them to be “contextually bilingual”: this speech may be acceptable if you’re facing down thugs in sinister urban settings like some video game commando; however, it is not suitable in my classroom. That means offering linguistic alternatives to “shut up” when you want someone to quiet down.
But over the years, I’ve had to grudgingly admit that some of these out-of-sync student semantics do work when civil dialogue does not. When, for example, a student won’t listen to a teacher, he or she will often listen to a peer. The problem with some student missives is it’s the right message, wrong medium.
Let’s take a familiar situation. Some students are off-task and need to get back to work. While teacher-speak might appropriately direct, “___, please get to work,” “Quit messing around and get to work,” or the more subtle dig, “You’re acting like a second-semester senior,” the student version might be, shall we say, more forceful.
In one class, I had two students who posed a particular challenge. At the fourth-quarter mark, my hunch was they were probably partners because nobody else wanted to work with them. The boy just had to go to his locker, taking 15 leisurely minutes to get project materials he should have brought to class. His partner, meantime, just couldn’t force herself to get started without him and was painstakingly munching sunflower seeds, examining each one with scientific curiosity before popping it in her mouth. When her partner finally returned, they anemically ambled to the computer to begin … something. Once there, they squandered yet more time cutting and pasting unrelated materials. Halfway into the wasting hour, I leaned between the two and said quietly, “It’s 25 minutes into the hour. What have you accomplished on your project?”
Their response was to cackle hilariously at my hint for productivity. Scratch the polite approach; it wasn’t working. Meanwhile, the student at the next computer, working diligently on her project, lost patience, harrumphed a warning, then spat out, “You’all are stupid!” the student equivalent of, “Get to work and stop acting like goofballs.”
Now, I would never call a student stupid; it’s demeaning and disrespectful. But … I did want these students to act like students. Nothing I had done that day – no polite inquiries, no offers of help, no encouragement or cajoling – inspired even a yawn of interest. But when their classmate snapped, the guffawing stopped and the work began. Go figure.
Another student I met was also quite peer-sensitive. In this case, the polite teacher directive might be, “No hitting, please” or perhaps, “No reward if you hit people.”
“Susan” was a cognitively disabled, non-verbal student. I didn’t know her well and she had a habit of hitting… well, everyone. I didn’t understand or wasn’t told whether Susan had any triggers for this behavior. I also didn’t know if hitting was her response to frustration in communicating her needs or frustration with change. While I was transporting her on a public city bus as part of my assignment, I essentially had to hold her hands to prevent her from hitting passengers on the bus. The minute I’d let up, Susan would take a swipe at someone, so she needed constant vigilance.
However, there was one classmate Susan never hit and teachers wisely paired them on activities. One of the aides told me why. Susan never hit “Rhonda” because Rhonda had made it clear to Susan in very direct terms that she would not tolerate it. When I asked a former special ed teacher for her interpretation, she reasoned that Rhonda treated Susan the same way she’d treat any other student, with blunt realpolitik, not polite kid gloves. Susan respected Rhonda by not hitting her – ironically, respect she didn’t shower on overtly polite adults like me who spoke to her in appropriate, if ineffectual, tones.
A basic understanding that students come to school with different linguistic, economic, social, cultural, and educational contexts helps negotiate a jumble of possible interpretations. Leastwise, when a student says something like, “Shut up … please,” I can interpret that as a linguistic compromise. Hey, it’s a start.
June 2 , 2006