by Linda Burleson

Created on: June 26, 2008

Has a culture of rudeness undermined public education in America? Not only has it undermined public education in America; it has undermined self-esteem. A young person who is not taught to respect others often has little or no self-respect.

My son-in-law used to have his children do push ups according to their capabilities (He was a coach at the time) when they failed to use ma'am or sir in response to adults. Today, not only are they polite, they are honor students, and the older of the two is going to college on a full golf scholarship. Golf is a sport that has a strict dress and courtesy code. Her early teaching helped her to adapt easily to that code.

For many years I was the administrative assistant in a middle school. I noticed immediately when the change from courtesy to rudeness began to occur. Forgive my prejudice here, but from my personal observation, it was a regional culture thing.

As a youth I remember seeing films such as "Blackboard Jungle" and "West Side Story". I thought they were pure fiction! I had never imagined young people behaving like the characters in those movies behaved. I recognized it as a total lack of respect for authority and a "poor me" attitude. "What I want; what I think; and what I say is all that matters" or "What I want, when I want it; no matter what it takes to get it".

In the 80s, after marrying and having three children of my own, I accepted a job as a school administrative assistant (back then it was Secretary to the Principal). National Geographic had just published a large spread on how wonderful a place Texas was to live - with a strong economy, reasonably priced housing, and affordable living. Suddenly there was a huge influx of people from the upper mid-west and the east coast moving to Texas - to the Dallas Ft. Worth Metroplex in particular. At that time the auto industry was in serious trouble, and many of the newcomers were from Michigan. They had packed up and moved without job or housing prospects. Some were living in tents at the nearby lake. Our school immediately became overcrowded. That, along with students coming in who had entirely different values than the natives, caused a stir. We had never had a gang problem, but now we began having to combat that. There was no way we were ever going to get these students to use polite terminology to address teachers and administrators. It was a whole new world - one for which we were not prepared.

Not understanding that ma'am and sir were essentially southern terms,

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