Teachers Are Being Told They Can't Say 'No' to Students
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses the troubling trend of training teachers to avoid saying 'no' to students, arguing that children need adults who set firm limits.
Key Takeaways
- Kids need to hear 'no' - Learning to accept limits is a crucial part of development
- Avoiding 'no' doesn't help students - It creates an unrealistic expectation that the world will always accommodate them
- Teachers need authority - Stripping away the ability to set limits removes one of a teacher's most basic tools
Transcript
Kids need to hear no sometimes.
They need to hear no from their parents and they need to hear no from their teachers and other adults at school if they're doing something that they shouldn't be doing.
And it's become offensive, I guess, to some people to say no.
And I'm hearing now that teachers are being told you can't say no, you have to say no thank you, or you have to redirect in some sort of positive way that does not involve actually telling a child no or a young person no when they're doing something that they should not be doing, or even when you have to answer a question in the negative.
How far are we gonna take this?
And are we going to realize that saying no is not worse than the thing that we're saying no to, right?
Like if something is unsafe, The unsafe thing is the bad thing, and saying no about it is not the bad thing.
Or calling a behavior bad.
This is another one that people are sharing with me that they're not allowed to say.
You're not allowed to call a behavior bad.
And I get that we shouldn't call kids bad.
You don't want to label kids.
But not being able to call a behavior bad if it is clearly a bad behavior, like...
What kind of Orwellian language policing is this where there is something that is like objectively bad, a behavior that is objectively harmful to the class, to other students, to adults.
We're not even allowed to use a word that is bad because it could make the kid feel bad.
Please.
get the difference straight in your head.
There are things that are actually harmful.
Getting punched is harmful.
Throwing furniture is harmful.
But saying the word bad or saying the word no, not harmful, not actually bad.
And are people going to necessarily feel bad when they hear that?
No.
In a lot of cases, kids do not feel bad when they're told no.
Kids are looking for boundaries and they're looking for the adults in their lives to to provide those boundaries to know that they're cared about.
And if we are not up to that challenge, if we are not willing to say no, if we are not willing to put boundaries in place, we're actually removing a guardrail and something that creates that sense of safety that kids need.
So we're letting them down.
if we're not willing to say no, if we are not willing to label bad things bad and let kids know that we care about them and we're not willing to let them get into or do bad things.
So I think we've just got to stop this language policing and we've got to be honest with kids about right and wrong about what is an okay way to treat other people an okay way to act in life and not worry that we're going to hurt their feelings and that's not to say we should hurt their feelings on purpose or be mean about it or anything but being told no is an experience that everybody needs to have like you need to be told no when you hit a boundary like you need to encounter a boundary and bounce off of it and realize okay there it is that's what i needed to hear let me know what you think