- If it Looks Patronizing, Sounds Patronizing, Tastes Patronizing, Smells Patronizing, and Feels Patronizing, Is it Patronizing or Something I “Need” to Hear?
I woke up one May morning in 2011, pulled on my frumpy teacher pants, drank my tea, drove to work.
After a school cafeteria lunch, the term lunch used as loosely as my bowels after eating it, I propelled my practical footwear towards Room 222. Darned if I didn’t come upon two students behaving ‘inappropriately.’
Inexplicably, an intellectual tsunami rushed my brain the moment I caught the culprits inscribing Homer and Madge Simpson drawings onto Parent Night posters. I was bombarded with an awareness about my years of training to micro manage the behaviors of my students.
This thought jumped into my head: “COMMENTING ON THE BEHAVIORS OF OTHERS IS MANIACALLY PATRONIZING!!!!!!!!!!!”
No wonder we can’t escape patriarchy, achieve racial equality, gender equality, or minimize mental illness!! We’ve been brainwashed into believing we NEED to be taught how to micro manage the behaviors of others and how to tolerate the micro management of our own behaviors. When we believe it is OK to be patronized and patronizing, digging our way out of power imbalanced relationships is never going to happen.
The violating nature of commenting on the appropriateness of someone else’s behaviors or receiving commentary about the appropriateness of my behaviors washed over me. For the first time I achieved clarity about the fact my behaviors are personal, private, and under my sole control. I realized my behaviors are as private as my genitals. And I realized how violating it was for me, as a teacher, a parent, or a friend, to comment on the behaviors of anyone else except for my own.
The two ‘misbehaving’ students benefited from my intellectual crisis. I told them to move along without referencing their behaviors or giving consequences for the misplaced artwork. The obsession educators have about managing student behaviors always seemed super weird to me but in this moment it seemed grossly inhumane and degrading.
When the clock struck 3:11, every student except Lucy Danforth was gone so I rummaged into the farthest reaches of my sensible teacher-conference tote- bag and found a single saltine less than a year old. Score.
I then ceremoniously sat at my desk for a deep think about the day’s events. At 3:34 a shriek from behind the bookshelf startled me so violently I screamed from the depths of my school-lunch-filled bowels and threw myself instinctively and heavily onto the floor. Principal Bobby J. Walker called 911 my scream was so loud.
You see, I did not know Lucy Danforth was still in the room. She had been meticulously planning how to royally scare me for months; apparently she and her mother watch a lot of Ellen. Lucy couldn’t have been happier with my terror-filled reaction.
The EMT’s arrived shortly after Lucy gleefully ran out to the room. After my explanation Byron, head EMT, looked at me with patronizing disdain and said curtly, “You really should have better control of your students’ behaviors.” Byron shook his head dismissively and left the room. His two comrades smiled weakly and filed out, heads bowed.
“Better control of my students’ behaviors…” Byron’s words haunted me. How dystopian, how Handmaid’s Tale, how creepy. We would be horrified if someone took control over our sexual behaviors and micromanaged how, when, where, and why we should have sex. But all non-sexual behaviors are offered up, no questions asked, for communal objectification, micromanagement, and commentary?? How did this creepy obsession with the personal behaviors of people other than ourselves come to pass?
It did not take me long to find the culprits. Religion, psychology, and super trendy spiritualities have provided us cheapening and degrading definitions of most all our human behaviors. Theses behemoths of bossiness have taught us our human tendencies are so problematic we have to keep ourselves constantly in check. To ‘help’ us comply with what they have defined as normal human behaviors, these condescending schools of thought have provided us exactly two choices at all times, to be patronized whenever someone else does not approve of our behaviors or to be patronizing to those whose behaviors we disapprove of. Successfully navigating modern life requires becoming an expert at being either patronized or patronizing! Can we reframe this insipid dynamic I wondered?
By 5:03 I was still in my classroom thinking. I stood up at 5:04 and aggressively ripped down all the schmaltzy, self-helpy inspirational quotes littering my walls. Suddenly these alleged pearls of quoted wisdom passive aggressively telling me what to do seemed unbearably patronizing and condescending.
And I wondered, how undeservedly grandiose must a person or ideology be to assume authority for arbitrarily deciding which human behaviors are ‘abnormal.’
Rules are one thing, human behaviors quite another. Rules can be mutually agreed upon and enforced without ever discussing behavior. There are different kinds of rules for different settings. Our school has a rule about not defacing school property. Two students broke this rule today and should have received a consequence. But nowhere in that social contract is it required to reference the behaviors of rule breakers.
Besides, behaviors don’t make decisions. Behaviors don’t do our thinking. Behaviors don’t automatically decide when to manifest and when not to. Our brain is capable of making predictive decisions for what to do next, period. Our behaviors go along for the ride by supporting and enabling our predictive decisions. Thus, commenting on behaviors is not only a violation of a human’s rights, it’s also irrelevant. Talking about how to achieve a desired goal differently would suffice when a child breaks a rule. Harping on the child’s behaviors is patronizing and pointless.
I don’t need to hear about how anybody else perceives my behaviors. And I don’t need to give anyone else my ‘read’ on their behaviors. I have been teaching for 7 years since my intellectual tsunami. Behavior problems no longer occur when I teach because I no longer see behaviors as the source of problems. I help students achieve learning goals by using everything at my disposal except for behavior control! Knowing they will not be violated with dystopian behavior management techniques, my students are calm, comfortable, and eager to engage in learning activities. No student of mine will ever be put on a dehumanizing, degrading, patronizing ‘behavior plan’ again!
Lucy Danforth, having watched Ellen scare her guests to hilarious effect, had no idea the chain of events she was capable of setting off with her behavior of scaring me. The next day I discussed with Lucy the potential pitfalls of scaring the bejeezus out of people. Never once did I make reference to her behavior. But we had a great discussion about how to assess when and where it might be OK to scare someone. I didn’t patronize or shame Lucy’s behavior with my teacher authority. I just talked about how to decide this or that depending on the context.
I am working with a neuroscientist to prove behavioral micromanagement is not just irritating, dehumanizing, and patronizing, it is also devastating for brain development and mental health.
I desperately want to live in a world with gender and racial equality. But as long as we say, “Hey, anybody in a position of authority can determine who is behaving normally and who is not, we will not come close to achieving equality on any front. We will all marinate in an uncomfortable soup of either being patronized or patronizing.
