Respect-due and respect-earned: negotiating student–teacher relationships

Abstract

Respect is a cardinal virtue in schools and foundational to our common ethical beliefs, yet its meaning is muddled. For philosophers Kant, Mill, and Rawls, whose influential theories span three centuries, respect includes appreciation of universal human dignity, equality, and autonomy. In their view children, possessors of human dignity, but without perspective and reasoning ability, are entitled only to the most minimal respect. While undeserving of mutual respect they are nonetheless expected to show unilateral respect. Dewey and Piaget, scions of the same liberal tradition, grant children a larger degree of autonomy and equality thereby approximating the full respect conditions reserved for adults in the prior theories. In this article, after reviewing the premises of respect, I attempt to blend the divide – between minimal and full respect – by separating respect-due from respect-earned. While the former, premised on human dignity, should be granted unconditionally to all, the latter is contingent upon qualities that one possesses or acquires over time. Adding the notion of respect-due is a constraint on the prevalent school practice of turning respect into demands for deference. The relevance of this distinction is discussed in terms of student–teacher relationships.

Keywords:

• education
• children
• teachers
• relationships
• respect
• authority
• morals

Notes

Notes

1. Respect is considered a cardinal virtue by such programs as: Caring School Community, Character Education Partnership, Character Counts, Center for the 4th and 5th Rs, Character Plus, Heartwood Institute, Lessons in Character, Open Circle, Positive Action, Project Essential, Second Step.

2. Throughout this article teachers are referred to as she and students as he for the sake of clarity.

3. The embeddedness of equality (sometimes expressed as mutual or reciprocal) in the notion of respect is problematic, for people can be of equal worth yet not entitled to equal treatment, as is typical of parents with their children. They can mutually and reciprocally respect one another without that respect demanding a complete parallelism of deserts. Role and status considerations affect the content of respect. Thus, an employer and employee are equally respectful of one another yet agree that the suggestions of the employee have less weight than those of the employer. It is often unclear whether the term respect is being used to suggest equal worth or equality as sameness. Unilateral respect is obviously the former and illustrates how far respect can depart from a golden rule standard, but often one is hard put to decipher what sort of equality is intended by the word. In this article, I have tried to reserve the term 'equal’ where sameness is understood – that which you suggest has the same weight as that which I suggest.