Draft Four: Words hurt

On why we shouldn’t call our students “stupid”.

For years after high school, I had a recurring dream. It featured my math teacher, who was also our head teacher (diriginte). He was a brown-suit clad chain-smoker who wore shaded lenses and had a mean tongue. The dream went something like this: I was asked to come forth to the blackboard and solve a math problem. I would stumble. He would lose patience. I would panic. He would get even more agitated and start calling me names. I would freeze. He would decide I was stupid, worthless and give me a 2 (of out 10).

The dream re-enacted my experiences with him from my freshman year, when I failed math and brought „shame upon him and our class”, as he used to say. I did this by not showing up to school, having a record number of missed days in a semester, which I covered up with medical permission slips I forged to cover five days instead of one sick day. He called me out during our classes, told me I was embarrassing my colleagues and my family, and went on to presume I was drinking during the time I should have been in school.

I wasn’t drinking, but I was hiding from my family. I left the house every morning, hid around the block until they went to the hospital where they worked, then returned home to read Sci-Fi novels. I did this is because I was terrified by this math teacher and others like him, professors I had just met when I started high school. They would call us stupid, hurl other insults (“Venetian bush” stuck with me), and remind us we were in an “elite institution”. It wasn’t long before my heart started racing so fast when I was called on to speak that I couldn’t articulate a word.

Sometimes I could stutter my way through a sentence, but shame at stuttering would overwhelm me, and I’d shut up again. My colleagues would laugh. The teacher would be annoyed. In several instances I had trouble pronouncing my own name, a common affliction in these situations.

I felt alone. I felt like a loser. I hated feeling like this, and I hated the anticipation that I would feel like this. So, I skipped class after class. And when my head teacher did see me, he’d often remind me of what he thought: “You will end up cleaning toilets”.

*

I graduated 25 years ago. The teacher has long since passed away. But these memories remain. They don’t hurt as much, I don’t have that recurring dream anymore, but those time have shaped me.

I remembered all this watching how students at the journalism school of the University of Bucharest decided this week to call out professors for name calling and verbal abuse. It started with a brave young woman who got up and left a class where the professor kept calling students “stupid”. As in “you were stupid when you were admitted”, or “you’ll graduate stupid” because “you are stupid”. She didn’t name him. But others did – Marian Petcu, known mostly for his classes on the history of the Romanian press. More anecdotes poured in from other students who heard insults from him over the years, directed at their how they looked (“four eyes”), how they dressed and acted (“stop touching your neck, it’s erotic”), or phrases like “Why are you silent? Are you orphans?”.

Almost 60 students then signed an official complaint and delivered it to the dean. Some of the faculty called for the professor to be suspended until an inquiry is carried out. Social media was flooded with other examples.

My first reaction was pride. I wrote earlier this year about teaching some of these students and being pained by the stories they shared. I had heard some of them before: mostly stories of neglect, but also of verbal abuse and other inappropriate behavior. Hell, I had lived through them myself.

My generation and the ones that followed never went as far as these students do now. Occasionally a situation would flare up, or one student complained, promises were made, then things went back to how they were. Also, and this is the hard part for me to admit, at age 20 I never questioned the language used in class (including by this very same professor), just as I had never questioned my high school teachers. Yes, they were mean. Yes, their behavior profoundly influenced my experience of school. But that kind of aggression, or roughness, or carelessness was the social norm. That wasn’t abuse; abuse meant taking a beating. They didn’t beat me. Thus, the only problem, I thought, was me. The only solution? Get tough.

Thankfully, these students are not my and their parents’ generation. While they still often endure this kind of language in school or in the workplace, enough of them know that no matter the issue at hand, they shouldn’t be insulted, belittled, or called names. And they speak up.

My second reaction was guilt. More than 15 years ago, at a magazine I worked for, we featured Petcu in a fashion spread alongside other university profs. I was still slightly scared of him, but also thought the school had larger problems. Looking back, I understand the story I was telling myself. I grew up and was socialized as an adult in an environment where various types of abuse were the norm. Being belittled or abused has probably made me belittle or abuse others in turn. I most likely said things that were inappropriate, dismissive, maybe even damaging.

I know I tried hard not to. But when this is the water you swim in, your rarely stop to notice because you don’t know how. And when you don’t notice, you don’t act, and you become complicit. How many opportunities have me and my peers wasted to make life better for others?

*

The professor himself told a newspaper he didn’t mean it. To another he intimated students need to learn to have a sense of humor. He said was playful. He was joking.

Some students of his over the years made a similar argument in reaction to the news. Yes, he calls people “stupid”, no one denies the facts. But he’s teasing. It’s just his way of being affectionate; otherwise, he is a good teacher. There are other even more rotten apples at the school, they said. There are darker things we should look at.

Let’s take these apart. The latter is most likely true: students have shared with me other stories that have to do with abuse of power, untoward behavior, and what could be serious breaches of morals and ethics. What I wish is that we, older colleagues in the profession, don’t fail them this time, and stand by their side as their fight continues.

But two things can be true at the same time. There can be “graver incidents”. Still, calling people “stupid” is not a trivial matter.

Let’s work with the premise that he was joking or being playful, that the idea he was intentionally harming students is preposterous. You can have good intentions and still cause harm – anyone who’s even led a project, a team, even a group of friends going on a trip, knows that. You can love people and still say something you’ll later learn has hurt them.

Because intention, while important, is different from perception. And perception, to us as individuals, is/feels like truth. And emotional truths stick. Maybe my teacher in high school called me names and predicted I’ll clean toilets because he was desperate to get me back on track. Maybe he wanted me to succeed and the only tool he knew how to use was fear mongering. Maybe he loved us all, but could only show care through sarcasm and cynicism.

The problem with all of this is that a young mind just takes the hit of the words, and these words hurt just as much as a punch, and often the effect lingers for much longer. There is science to back this up, and this is why these situations – especially in schools – need to stop.

Studies (see here, here) in the past 20 years have shown that verbal abuse in childhood – from adults and peers – is strongly associated with depression, anxiety, and other conditions later in life. The toll on self-esteem is highest (you will end up saying to yourself, as I did for many years: “I am stupid”), but verbal abuse also has negative effects on emotional well-being, productivity, and social relationships.

Also, consider these:

• The student's perception matters. Even if the professor was being playful, the student may not have perceived the comment as such. They may have already been feeling insecure or vulnerable, and the comment could have reinforced those negative feelings.

• There are power dynamics at play. Comments by professors carry more weight and may be interpreted differently than if they were made by a colleague.

• The learning environment changes if language creates the appearance of a hostile space. I felt this in high school, when comments were detrimental to both me and the other students, who often laughed to make sure they escaped the same fate. This leads to a breakdown in trust.

• Coping mechanisms include a lack of assertiveness, and defensive silence – both of which I’m familiar with. Plus, studies say those who get verbally abused turn to alcohol or smartphone addiction and other means to cope with victimization in social situations.

• You don’t “get used to it”. Or you do, but not in the way you get used to compliments. A recent study says that repeated exposure to insulting language (which hurts like a slap would) can lead to some degree of desensitization – meaning people may rate insults as less offensive after being exposed to a larger number. But not that much less.

*

What is undeniable is that many of us carry these experiences into adulthood.

Last weekend I was with legal professionals in a leadership program, and they had to craft a short speech about something important to them. These were young judges and prosecutors and lawyers at the top of their game. When they dropped their professional masks, they talked about fear: of failing, of not being seen, of not being good enough. This fear most of them traced back to childhood, either to their families or to a teacher.

Bianca, a lawyer, recalled a story from when she was 12. She was in math class, standing at the blackboard, hesitating over an exercise. “Common girlie, can’t you even write on the board?”, the teacher said. The chalk broke in Bianca’s hand. The class burst out laughing. Her heart started racing, and she couldn’t articulate any words. She started to cry. The teacher wouldn’t have it. Tears made her angry. “What’s wrong girlie, are you in a different world? Can’t you write? 3 for today. Next time, study. Even a fourth grader could solve this.”  

That moment, Bianca said, sowed fear deep inside of her. Of math, yes, which she later avoided, but also of being wrong, and of being seen. She still felt it, standing there next to us, many years later. You could hear a pin drop in the room after she finished her story.

We all knew that feeling.

*

Toughening up, in front of all this evidence that words can hurt, is not the way.

Yes, at the J-School one professor was singled out this time, but it’s bigger than him, and it’s bigger than one school. It’s an entire system we’re talking about. This is still a way to be in the world, in Romanian schools, and other institutions (and families).

The school’s response so far has been disappointing. The dean initially replied he’s waiting on an official complaint before addressing the matter, students were banned from commenting on a school Facebook group, while officials kept posting about the department’s rebranding. If perception generates emotional truth, then the school just told the world: our new logo is more important than the well-being of our students.

Maybe the students of today are more sensitive as the Gen Z cliché goes. But I’d rather live in their world because they are braver, more vulnerable, and willing to live with a more open heart. They tell us when something hurt them. We should listen because the insults we heard over the years hurt us, too. They hurt me. And they have hurt you judging by what many told me on Instagram over the weekend.

We carried these insults in shame. We carried them as evidence of failure. If you were a boy, we also carried the hurt as proof of being soft, and being soft was dangerous.

We’ll do wrong by one another, often unintentionally. That’s a given. But we can also listen and work to change, be open to understanding that calling students “stupid” for years might cause pain, might leave scars, and it’s not a way to manifest love and care. It can trigger the opposite. In schools, taking better care of language and behavior and knowing how you impact a young person’s development should be non-negotiable.

“Very few people treat us like they care about us”, Maria, who’s graduating this summer, told me after our class this fall. That should not be the case, Maria. That should not be the case Roxana, Andra, Cătălin, David, Teo, Andreea, Ana-Maria, Răzvan, Elena, Bianca, and countless others.

Caring should be the default.

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SIDE DISHES:

1. Writing this week’s letter, I was reminded of this series by my colleagues at Scoala9.ro did a few years back. Search for “Fricile pe care le învățăm la școală”. Here’s episode 1.

2. I’m reposting this TED Talk on the benefits of civility: better collaboration, well-being, better performance.

3. There is amazing science done on how trigger warnings, meant as a sign of care, often backfire because they increase vulnerability and anxiousness. But that doesn’t mean the idea of guidance is bad; we just need to improve on the execution.

4. Speaking of things that should not happen in schools: getting your underage students drunk and texting them at midnight. This investigation by Recorder is not their first to look at grooming by male teachers in Romanian schools.

5. If you want to understand stuttering better, read this amazing essay.

6. My first plan for this week – after seeing a Death Cab for Cutie show in Antwerp and a Will Sheff show in Copenhagen – was to write about losing and finding, about bittersweetness and sad songs. Until I do, here’s a beautiful sad song that got me crying at one of these shows.

7. My second plan was to write about Copenhagen and walking. Until I get to that, here’s a reminder of the power of walking as a form of cure and idea generation, from one of the city’s favorite (and complicated) sons, Søren Kierkegaard:

[Do] not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a  state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked  myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.