Reflection 4

A teacher friend was running his first lesson with a new class and, while he was going through some organisational things, a student said „Shouldn’t you introduce yourself first?!”

This sounds vastly inappropriate to me. First, even if it was a breach of good manners not to introduce yourself to a new class, this remark is plain rude and not the way to correct anyone’s mistake (whoever this person is). Second, what has happened to respect and trust that we owe people who are supposed to teach us? The teacher may later turn out to be incompetent or unfair and then we can treat them accordingly. But during our first encounter the natural attitude should be positive expectations, not aggression.

This incident is also one of many examples of the general collapse of authorities. We are told that we are all experts and we do not need to respect and rely on other people’s knowledge and opinions. Even if these people have spent their entire lives studying an area of knowledge. For example, against the unanimous opinion of the medical community, we know better that vaccines can hurt our children even if this claim is based on some anecdotal evidence and a rigged study whose author admitted he had faked the results and was sentenced by a UK court.