Teachers, when is the last time you allowed a student to call another an insulting name?
A couple of boys in one of my classes called another student "coach" last year. A shadow crossed over the boy's face. We were not playing basketball. "What's wrong with 'coach'?" the name-callers posed when I directed them to not use the word. I didn't need to know the backstory to recognize the intent of insult.
"I will not let anyone in this room call you names," I responded, "and I offer that same assurance to everyone in this room." Presenting no-name-calling as a protection to all (rather than as a protection only to the name-called) takes the spotlight off the bullied student. But I must be vigilant. Students know the power of an insult, and adolescents are attuned to the gaining and using of power.
A few years ago I failed to notice a name-calling episode until it had escalated. Of all places, it was an Interpersonal Communication class comprised of juniors and seniors. A quiet boy suddenly stood up, flipped-off another student, and stormed out of the room. It turns out his "friend" (yes, the boys were teammates and moved in the same social circle) had called him "Beaner" one too many times.
"I call him that all the time!" was the defense offered lamely. "He never minded it before!" I was ashamed to think the exchange had occurred "before" in my classroom.
I'm sure I've missed incidents of name-calling--but I have never allowed it intentionally. This hardly makes me some super-teacher. It is merely the lowest bar of civil interaction: call people by their names. No one gets to decide what they want to be called except the person him/herself. (I offer as evidence the artist formerly known as Prince and my friend Laura who told everyone at summer camp her name was "Misty.")
So this morning, when I open my newsfeed to another example of name-calling by our president-elect, my dismay is visceral. When Trump tweets (again, again) about the "failing New York Times" his epithet is read by 15+million followers. Like Homer knew, such name tags help an audience remember characteristics about fleet-footed Achilles or the grey-eyed Athena. But while Homer's intentions were literary, Trump's penchant for the epithet is sinister: "Lyin' Ted" and "Crooked Hillary," "Failing New York Times," and "Goofy Elizabeth Warren" are intended to lock an insult to a person's name, nestling into your brain next to the person (or NYT's) identity.
Furthermore, my students are already too willing to wallow in fallacious argument techniques without people in power providing daily examples of name-calling as an "acceptable" way to prove a point.
In this surge of Fake News, guiding people to reliable news sources is more important than ever. So I am vested in upholding the reputation of the New York Times--even if the NYT is not technically a person with a name.
But more importantly, hurling of insults is normalized every time it goes unchecked. And the proliferation of name-calling in public discourse over the election season has made my job as a civics teacher (yes, we all are) that much harder.
Apparently times have changed more than I thought. I don't ever recall any student name calling another student but maybe that's a grade level thing. I once had a kid use the "n" word in class, and he was gone within 10' transferred to another class after a suspension. Your essay draws an important correlation between what happens between immature young teens and a president elect who breezed through the primaries knocking off one opponent after another childishly bullying them with derogatory names linking them with a perceived weakness. His election portends a coarsening of America which is already well underway. How sad it is for all of us and for civility in general. As a long time reader of the NY Times I'm amazed that the public can't discern between its general news coverage and its very liberal opinion section.
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