Notion of Civility May Finally Get a Little Respect

No one is talking anymore about having Anaheim high school students jump to their feet in respect whenever an adult enters the room.

But while the quirky proposal has died, it also has given birth to a thought-provoking community discussion about the importance of respect shown by and toward teenagers--and what the schools’ role in promoting it should be.

From bus drivers to instructional aides to students, everyone in the 35,000-student Anaheim Union High School District is suddenly thinking and talking about how to respect each other, Supt. Jan Billings said. The recent school shootings near San Diego may have given added urgency to this campaign, some parents said.

That was hardly the reaction when school board President Katherine H. Smith first suggested that students at the district’s 22 middle and high schools should hop out of their chairs whenever a visitor entered the room and address all adults as “sir” or “ma’am.”

Smith said she hoped such practices could make the district more like the U.S. in the 1950s, when children knew their place and the country was “civil, compassionate and caring.”

Many students protested that teachers should show more respect to them--such as not making them feel stupid when they ask questions in class.

“Sometimes, students feel teachers are frustrated with them . . . with the questions they ask,” said Courtney Reed, 17, who represents Magnolia High School on the Board of Trustees.

Smith’s now-defunct Stand In Respect proposal also got a cool reception from many parents and teachers, who found it militaristic. But public discussions about the idea also revealed a surprising yearning for civility in Anaheim.

Since the proposal surfaced in January, the district has launched a series of meetings--which so far have been attended by more than 200 parents, students and educators--to talk about just what respect is and what students and adults could learn about it. In May the board is scheduled to consider the opinions and adopt a set of guidelines promoting courtesy on campus.

Many parents have come up with their own wish lists of respectful behavior.

Even bus drivers and cafeteria aides have joined the conversation in a meeting with her, Billings said. She added that many said they felt honored when told that they could play a role in students’ education by teaching them how to address people courteously and respectfully.

And to the surprise of parents and educators, the kids themselves have shown that they crave lessons in how to greet an adult, which fork to use and what to say during a job interview.

“At first people were saying, ‘No, I don’t want to stand when an adult walks into a room,’ ” said Katella High School principal Marsha Wagner. “But then kids were able to admit, ‘I would like to know how to shake a hand appropriately.’ ”

The school actually offered a four-week etiquette program, which ended last week, to teach such social skills. It was started by a classroom aide, Marion Dawirs, who noticed that students felt no shame about spitting in public but that many seemed painfully shy and could not make eye contact with adults.

Etiquette classes could help, she decided, and drafted a friend, a former guest relations manager at Disneyland, to help her.

The students, Dawirs said, were like “dry sponges, soaking it up. . . . They definitely wanted to learn these things.”

At the first session, 40 students showed up. By the fourth, more than 60 students had packed into the room, and the class was such a success that others are planned, Wagner said.

Civility “is not something that we consciously neglected,” Wagner said. “I just think as life has gotten so much busier, we have forgotten the finer points of living.”

The question is exactly what those finer points are. And to no one’s surprise, the community meetings have revealed that respect means different things to different people.

Debra Turner, PTA president at Katella, said she wants students to stop tossing trash around the campus and start respecting their school.

“It would be respecting the institution of public education, which is a huge issue in itself,” Turner said.

She added that because many students don’t learn basic etiquette at home anymore, maybe it’s not a bad idea for schools to pick up the slack.

“So many parents are busy; they’re working,” she said. “It’s sad to say, but there’s not a lot of one-on-one time with the kids teaching.”

But she also said that many of her son’s friends say teachers could show respect to students by treating them more like adults and less like babies.

John Armstrong, whose son attends Dale Junior High School, said he wants administrators to stop looking the other way when they hear conversations peppered with profanity.

“No one does anything about it,” Armstrong said. “Let the kids know what the rules are and reinforce them.”

For Molly Ortega, the grandmother of a student at Katella, respect means not coming to school “baring half your body.”

“They wear earrings in their nose, their eyebrows,” she said. “Is this really respect?”

Students say their fashions are not disrespectful.

“The way you dress has nothing to do with how you learn,” said Reed, a senior at Magnolia. “Whether I wear spaghetti-strap tops or a long-sleeved shirt, it doesn’t determine the grades I get.”

Scott Akamine, a senior who represents Savanna High School on the Board of Trustees, agreed. “What I see [us] doing is highlighting things that students already do that are respectful . . . and show that there is another side to it.”

He wants to disprove “this idea that the youth of our nation is, for the most part, disrespectful.”

Like many students, Reed said the discussions have caused students to think about their attitudes toward teachers, each other and their education.

“I’ve been talking about this all month,” she said. “The respect part, I think, is a good idea. We could all use a little respect.”

Many teachers agree with the students that their clothing has nothing to do with respect and that in many ways they already show consideration toward others, said Joan McGhee, the activities director and a math teacher at John F. Kennedy High School.

McGhee said many of her students were upset that school officials initially seemed to look at the respect issue only in terms of how much respect students could show adults. Some also objected that respect was only talked about in terms of formal gestures.

“I think it needs to go beyond that,” McGhee said. “We need to talk about respect and what it is. Having someone stand up and address someone by a certain name-- a lot of the kids felt that that doesn’t show respect; that says you’re doing something so you don’t get in trouble.”