Can you tell by the title that I'm taking a grad class!? It provides lots of food for thought, not always on the assigned topics either. One of the things that I have to do is read other people's posts and respond to them. Last week a woman commented at the end of her post that there is a growing gap between the expectations that teachers have for the appropriate way to treat adults and the expectation that parents have. This lead to several people commenting on the changes in society how disrespectful students are allowed to be. Everyone was very thoughtful and professional in their discussion. I enjoyed it. It also got me thinking...
It seems that there is a sense of loss over the automatic respect that adults and authority figures have always commanded in the past. It occurrs to me that those stages of grief that you go through with any loss could apply to this loss too. Actually calling the change in social norms a loss at all is a good first step. Society is changing, and it always will, but it seems like there has only been two choices for dealing with that. One choice would be to charge merrily forward embracing change whole heartedly, and the other choice to cling to the past and fight to keep or return to it. I now think that there may be a third way and that is to truly grieve the loss of the past and then let it go and face the future honestly. The only way we can go is forward, but to force joy and enthusiasm on those who are losing something in the change is unfair. I don't think you get to the acceptance phase of the grieving process until you do the others. So if you're grieving for social norms of the past, go ahead and do denial and anger and sadness, embrace them, but know that at some point you'll have to move forward.
