xiphias | I yelled at my class today

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I yelled at my class today

And then lectured them about lashon ha-ra.

I feel vaguely guilty about yelling and lecturing, but I'd feel a lot worse if I hadn't taken some action about students hurting each other's feelings.

I just don't know if I handled it right. One student wrote something that could be construed as hurtful about another student in zir notebook. A second student looked over zir shoulder, read it, and called the student about which it was about over to also see it, who saw it, grabbed the page of the notebook, and crumpled it up. Only the last part of this was obvious, so I yelled at the third student. Who was more upset by this than zie usually is when I yell at zir, so I knew that something else was up, and found out the rest of the story.

I told them that all three of them had done things wrong, but that they weren't of the same magnitude. I said that writing hurtful things in one's own notebook is bad, but that, as it wasn't intended to be seen by anyone, and therefore wasn't intended to hurt anyone, that is mitigating. So it's bad, but not SO bad. I said that grabbing someone else's notebook and crumpling the page was absolutely unacceptable. But that the person who had done the worst thing was the second student. Because that was lashon ha-ra.

And I lectured them about that. And how we, in the classroom, are a community, and lashon ha-ra damages communities. You don't have to LIKE everyone in your community, but you ARE a community. And avoiding lashon ha-ra is one of the ways you preserve communities.

The three students looked abashed and ashamed at their actions, and the rest of the class looked intent and somewhat worried. And at the end of the lecture, I asked if we were all willing to, in a sense, pretend that this whole situation hadn't happened. That, to repair our community, we had to forgive each other, which, in this case, would mean trying to remember the lessons, but forgetting the incident as much as we could.

They all agreed that they would like to move past the whole thing and pretend it never happened. I did try to be certain that all of them knew that, if they DIDN'T feel comfortable moving on, we could still work on it, but they were all embarrassed by it and wanted to just have it over and gone, so we did.

I still don't know if I did the right thing. I think I did an okay thing, but I don't know if I was right.

It's hard to know if one was fair. It's hard to know if one was correct.

Was I right that crumpling up the page was more wrong that writing the page? Was I right that calling attention to the page was more wrong than either writing it, or destroying it? I don't really know. I THINK I was at least close enough to right, but I'm not certain, and am still feeling guilty and unsettled. But I would feel MORE guilty and unsettled if I HADN'T done something like that. I'm responsible, in part, for my kids' moral and ethical development, and for their emotional health.

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I can't speak to the Jewish religious/moral/cultural aspects of this, obviously, only to my own moral sense. But. I think you taught several important lessons here:

--what a community is, and how to relate to the members of that community we may not like so much.

--that there are *degrees* of wrong, and that verbally repeating lashon ha-ra to others is a greater offense than thinking badly of someone. (This, IMO, is where most sects of Christianity fall down--the idea that looking lustfully at another woman while you're in a monogamous marriage is as bad as actually going out and sleeping with her.)

--*why* some of the rules you're teaching them exist.

--a lesson about forgiveness, and how to heal, and how to move forward as a community after an incident like this has occurred.

I personally think you did a lot of good.

Speaking as a pagan, I think you handled it properly. You talked about how a problem between just a few people could cause the destruction of the entire community.

I would say the first student did a wrong to the third student by writing down something hurtful. If the first student did not want anyone to know what was thought of the third student, it should not have been written down. The second student increased the wrong to the third student by making the student aware of the hurtful comment.

As the subject of the hurtful comment the third student had the right to do with the paper what ever they wished. I would have allowed student number three to destroy the paper, or to choose someone else to dispose of it.

Now how do you teach this lesson to adults?

How does that go along with the idea that the paper is the first student's property, and therefore their own to destroy or not destroy? Personally I think the third student also did a wrong thing by destroying someone else's property. In the situation where the paper had not yet been destroyed, I'd have encouraged the first student to erase the writing (if they could), destroy the paper themselves, or tear it out of the book and give it to the third student to dispose of. In the end, though, it's their property and their decision.

(And xiphias, I think you did good.)

As it turned out, as part of making things right, the first student volunteered to destroy the page zirself. Which neatly sidesteps the problem of who has the right to destroy it or not, solved the problem, and was a gesture that zie could do to help fix the situation.

You were right in that the second student committed the worst of the three sins. The other two are much harder to compare.

Agreed here.

But I think the writing may have been worse than the crumpling.
The writing was the release of the thought into the world where it could (and did) do damage.
The crumpling was an attempt at a tikkun for that act.
The snitching was the worst.

Agreed. There is a progression -- don't think it; if you must think it don't say it; if you must say it don't record it; if you must record it don't share it. As soon as you're on that path, you bring the risk that it will get out of your control. So writing it down, even if he didn't intend anyone else to see it, was still a problem.

I don't know if I agree with the FIRST part of that progression. I don't think that thoughts have any moral weight, positive or negative. Only actions do.

Prayer, for instance, is an action, not a thought. The notion of kavanah is a notion of adding thought TO an action -- but I believe the action is still paramount. (That is, naturally, a statement on which reasonable people can disagree, both in general philosophy, and within halacha. But that's where I personally come down on it.)

We can't control thoughts, so in a sense the first step of that is ridiculous. I meant it more in the sense of "don't cultivate the thought" -- don't nurture it and stew on it. That is more under your control (still not 100%, of course).

We can't control our passing thoughts, but we can still strive to not reel in the bad ones and invite them to stay for a while, y'know?

I don't know if I agree. Because the INTENT of the writing was not, as far as I know, to bring the thought into the world. The thought WAS in the world, in zir head, and zie may have considered it as a way to defuse the thought and get it away, as aquaeri suggests below.

I think your response was fair, although halachically you may have been incorrect to rebuke them as a group together, especially if you did so in front of others in the class who weren't previously involved. A first rebuke should almost always be done privately unless the tochecha is for a much graver chillul HaShem (but the likelihood of this being avoda zara, to name one example, strikes me as small).

OTOH, if you did rebuke them publicly, you almost certainly made an impression on the other talmidim that a private chat would have failed to impart, and my recollection of Shmirat Ha Loshon is that such utility is sometimes exculpatory, even if it's not ideal.

The other reason I did it right then is that the entire situation happened right in front of the rest of the class. Yes, rebuking people IS best done in private, but, in classroom situations, that's not always practical, which is why, I think, some leeway is given to teachers with classes, in practice at least, if not OFFICIALLY halachically.

There is a practical benefit to the way it happened in that it went from "problem-rebuke-solution-healing" in the open with all participating. Since everyone saw the problem, saw the one student grab the paper, saw the tears in that student's eyes, I didn't feel like I COULD take the time to get the students away from each other.

But, yes. The fact that I rebuked them together, and in front of their class, is one of the reasons I feel guilty about this. Probably the major reason.

As a child of 8 or 9 just the fact that you noticed and took action would have been very comforting to me. I had a horrible time in school with teachers who didn't have control of the class room. So having a class room in which rules are concistantly enforced equally and there are reasons behind the rules which make sense is helpful. Although I agree with

yehoshua about private vs. public rebuking.

First, thank you for some insight into your faith. It is always interesting to read you stuff about that.

Second, I think that you were right about who was at most fault. The writer could have been more discrete, but it is definately unacceptable to be the troublemaker in between. I believe that is the one called lashon ha-ra? I can see how that would wreck communities. I don't know if you should have called them out in front of everyone, but it surely made for a good object lesson.

I think the most important thing was that you responded to all three students, and made it clear that they were doing something damaging to the community as a whole. (It's not just the person the harsh words in the notebook were nominally about that can be hurt by them--it's everyone who reads or writes them, or is affected by echoes of diminishing trust and friendliness such things can cause.) It's important that you responded promptly, and made it clear that this really matters.

I don't know how important it is that you assessed the relative sinfulness accurately. If a community were to decide something like, "violence is worse than fraud, so violent crime should be punished more severely," that's a concept of "worse" that points to consequences. You seem to be saying, "X is worse than Y, and you should not do either of them. Both are hurtful to other individuals and the community we value. The only thing stopping you from doing either X or Y is your conscience." In that case, I don't see the value in dwelling on comparisons that can look like excuses/permission for the lesser offense.

That said, I'm not comfortable with the idea of teaching that the second student committed a worse offense than the other two. Whistleblowing is worse than doing something wrong in the first place? If you see one member of the community writing something vicious about another community member, the virtuous thing to do is to conceal the nastiness? Can that possibly be what you meant?

I think whistleblowing in this situation would have been telling the teacher, not the student who was being written about. The principle

xiphias is thinking of here, I believe, is that you spare a person embarrassment under any circumstances, and the second kid caused embarrassment to the offended party by drawing attention to the mean comment. Kid2 could have told on Kid1 or rebuked Kid1 himself and then not hurt Kid3's feelings.

That said, I'm not comfortable with the idea of teaching that the second student committed a worse offense than the other two. Whistleblowing is worse than doing something wrong in the first place?

I'm not sure that's what Xiphius was saying. It's not totally clear to me, but my impression was that the second student told the third student in a malicious/teasing way, as a way to hurt the second (and possibly the first, as well). In that sense, yes, it was worse.

No, not really. It was a sort of, "hey, look what so-and-so wrote about you" thing -- no attempt to hurt anyone, and no maliciousness.

If it HAD been malicious, then rebuking zir would not have been as effective. Zie HADN'T been attempting to do anything wrong, which is why zie felt guilty when zie found out zie had.

I don't like the comparison to whistle-blowing because it takes us into a much more complicated realm of hilchot loshon hara. Whistle-blowing has a clear implication of a grievance against the larger community. It is equally clear that running between two individuals saying "Plony called you a poopy-head" does nothing but sew further sinat chinam (senseless hatred) between the kid who wrote it and the kid bout whom it was written. Even if this is already known to both parties, the involvement of the third party almost always will make the situation worse by antagonizing someone. Thus, the Chofetz Chaim was pretty emphatic about tale-bearing being worse than writing something impolite in one's private notebook (as long as there is reason to believe that the notebook was meant to be private). It really doesn't matter how nasty it was at that point.

BTW, please remember that this is an explicitly Jewish environment we're talking about, and that the Chofetz Chaim (R' Yisroel Meir haKohen Kagan zt''l) spent decades thinking hard about these very issues, and concluded that there are different levels of severity. You're welcome to disagree with him, but in a Jewish context you'll almost certainly be incorrect.

After we agreed to drop the whole thing, various students started asking me about other, more complex situations involving lashon ha-ra, and I could answer a couple of them, but did have to say, for other ones, "I don't know -- lashon ha-ra is a really complex issue and important, and I'd have to look it up."

By the way, I think we still have your jacket in the trunk of our car.

Recent warm weather really doesn't call for it and it's not in our way or anything, but you may want to arrange some time to pick it up *before* it becomes necessary. :)

I think it sounds like an appropriate reaction on your part. I don't remember what age group you teach, but this kind of lesson is especially important when the kids are getting towards middle school age, when all they want to do is lashon hara.

Personally? I think you did pretty damn well.

Having feelings, and expressing them to yourself, is not wrong - it's human. Student #1 is the least at fault here. The only lack in judgement was expressing the negative feelings in a place easily read by others.

I can't speak from a Jewish perspective, but...

Your analysis of the situation and the way you handled it both match my own ethical perspective, for what it's worth. As for rebuking the children publicly, I think it was best that you did. If you noticed the exchange, it's certain that the other children did as well, and also quite probable that they'd have talked about it later. You used the situation as a teaching opportunity, and gave the children a context for dealing with it. That's not the same as simply telling someone off publicly.

What's really impressive to me is that you had the sensitivity to notice that the third child's reaction was different than usual and to follow up appropriately.

What's really impressive to me is that you had the sensitivity to notice that the third child's reaction was different than usual and to follow up appropriately.

seconded.

I'm pretty impressed in general. It may have been less embarrassing for all involved if done in private, but sometimes time is of the essence where lessons are concerned.

Is student 3 someone who is often teased? If so, I think they are the least likely to feel your judgement was fair. They may require a bit extra empathy over the next few days to drive the idea home that your lessons come from a place of helping, or they may become resentful.

I talked to zir after school, just a second or two, to see how zie was doing. Zie said that zie was really okay -- that zie was really upset initially at the thing, but ten minutes later, it was basically gone from zir mind.

Disclaimer: I know nothing (or at least nothing more than I've picked up reading your journal) about Jewish ethics and good conduct.

I said that writing hurtful things in one's own notebook is bad, but that, as it wasn't intended to be seen by anyone, and therefore wasn't intended to hurt anyone, that is mitigating.

I'm someone who's discovering that if someone is irritating me, writing it all down explicitly (in a private journal not intended for anyone else to read, while in a location where others can't read over my shoulder) often stops me feeling as bugged about the person, or coming to a more rounded understanding, for example of why they might behave that way, or how the situation might look from their perspective.

I'm not remotely the write-things-down-to-analyse-them type, except now I (hesitantly) try it, it actually does work, and I can't seem to do this nearly as well without the writing down.

Would that really be considered a bad thing?

Personally, I don't think so.

In this situation, as other people have said, Student 1 could have been more discreet, but just not liking someone isn't a problem. And Styudent 3 acted out of impulse, and passion -- and attacked a piece of paper rather than a person. Student 1 was a little at fault, largely for indescretion, and Student 3's actions were over-the-line, but understandable.

Assuming what is written is in a private journal, not intended for sharing, does how the thing is written play a role in determining whether or not it is lashon ha-ra? I'm thinking of the difference between "So-and-so is ....." and "When So-and-so does this thing, I feel......" or (Sometimes I feel that So-and-so is (doing this unflattering thing)."

I think you did a right thing. I think there are other ways you could've handled it that would probably have been as good, but none that would likely have been better.

As for the guilt you feel, it's certainly understandable. As a parent, I've experienced similar feelings when I've had to rebuke my kids in front of other people. That guilt is one of the chief reasons why being a parent is more difficult than being a kid, I think.

My husband is a middle school teacher and was VERY impressed. Can you define "lashon ha-ra"?

I can try.

The literal translation is "the evil/bad tounge." "Lashon" is "tounge", and, by extention, "language" -- Hebrew, for instance, is called "the holy language", or "lashon ha-kadosh." "Ra" means "evil" or "bad", as in "yetzer ha-ra" -- "the impulse to do evil." As contrasted with the "yetzer ha-tov", "the impulse to do good."

(Paranthetically, in Judaism, it is considered that most people ought to balance their yetzer ha-ra and yetzer ha-tov. Because a society can only survive a certain number of people with NO yetzer ha-ra. Folks who are entirely devoted to their yetzer ha-tov will spend all their time in meditation, study, and prayer, and will not look toward material or earthly needs -- such as growing food, expanding businesses, investing, starting families -- all of which are from "base impulses", like sex, desire for power, desire for comfort and wealth -- and that, properly harnessed, those desires end up HELPING the community, rather than harming it. Of course, UNHARNESSED, they're destructive.)

The most frequent translation you see for "lashon ha-ra" is "gossip", or perhaps "talebearing" (well, that's more properly "rechilut", but "rechilut" and "lashon ha-ra" are very closely related sins), but, like most culturally-dependent terms, the simple translations are only approximate, and possibly misleading. Because lashon ha-ra is far more wide-reaching than either of these things. And also narrower.

"Talebearing" sounds a lot like "tattle-taleing", but it's not quite the same. If you are reporting a wrong done to the appropriate authorities, is that right or wrong?

Well. . . . it depends. On whether said authorities are just and fair and are exercising apropriate rule of law, for instance. Like most concepts, lashon ha-ra gets real messy and difficult when applied to the Real World. Most Jewish law does, frankly -- but that doesn't make it less useful.

And we usually think of "gossip" as a problem as spreading negative, untrue stories about people. And those are certainly the worst. But, lashon ha-ra includes passing along TRUE information -- and even passing along POSITIVE information.

According to the rules of lashon ha-ra, you may only pass along RELEVANT information, true or false.

Of all the rules in Jewish law, lashon ha-ra is probably the most difficult to follow. Of the rules which I attempt to follow, lashon ha-ra is the one I screw up most often.

There is something of an overview of some of the basic concepts in lashon ha-ra here. It's fairly basic, but, as far as I understand the laws, it's a good starting point.

I guess, if I were to try to make a one sentence description of lashon ha-ra, I might say, "using words in a way that hurts a person, or damages a community." Even positive statements may damage a community, in that they can stir up resentment. If I say "Adam is very smart," and Betty hears it, Betty may wonder if I think that SHE'S not very smart, since I didn't say that about her.

Like I said, of the Jewish laws I do make an attempt to follow, this is one of the ones which I most consistently screw up. I try to follow it, but, heck -- I'm CERTAIN that there is TONS of lashon ha-ra in my LJ right now.

"According to the rules of lashon ha-ra, you may only pass along RELEVANT information, true or false."

I am sorry if it is tricky, but having been called (accused of being?) a private person myself, often I learn important and useful things that are helpful for me by listening to tales for enjoyment.

So, my first question is - how is the talker supposed to know which information would be relevant? Or is silence always considered better than revealing information? But what about situations when not knowing brings harm, yet the silent person has no way to KNOW that the silence would bring harm? Preventative talking would still be a sin even so?

What is the responsibility of the listener? Is it sin if I do not talk about the problems I grapple with, so making it impossible for others to know what information WOULD be relevant?

I do find this a really fascinating set of problems/ rules/ possibilities of interpretation.

It IS tricky. It's probably the most complex set of rules in Judaism, and, besides being complex, it's probably ALSO the most difficult to follow -- the desire to gossip is probably stronger than, for instance, the sex drive. It's probably easier to pass up sex with hot twins than it is to have sex with them and then not brag about it later. :)

Silence is not ALWAYS considered better. But it's really complicated. Your third paragraph summarizes many of the truly difficult questions about lashon ha-ra. The short answer is that it's all a balancing act, and that those situations are a judgement call, and not an easy one.

A listner has a responsibility to not listen to lashon ha-ra, in general, but that's not what you're asking. As far as I know, it's not really a sin to not talk about your problems, but talking about one's problems to one's friends is often a good thing to do, just from a mental health point of view -- that's one of the reasons to have friends.

So, in other words -- you've put your finger on several of the difficult questions in lashon ha-ra, and I don't have easy answers to any of them. There are books about lashon ha-ra which attempt to work out these questions, but I've not internalized them, so I can't really answer your questions.

You are a true teacher - taking a real-life opportunity to show ethical and compassionate behavior to the whole class. I am proud of you.

non-jew here, and IMO you did really well -- except for the yelling.

i don't know if you were "correct"; i'll leave that to other jews. but the concept of lashon hara is difficult (as i understand it), and i think you did a good job of getting it across in this context. and yes, i think it was important to do it publicly -- because the event that set things off was public as well, and ethical lessons are learned well if they have immediate practical connection and application.

i also agree with your "severity" distinction. i think it's ok to write down negative thoughts about other people; i find that cathartic (though i endeavour to do it so nobody else can see, or only somebody i trust NOT to tattle about it, like a partner). i don't think it's appropriate to destroy other people's private property even if said property contains a bit of nastiness about oneself -- if the page had instead been put up somewhere public, or handed around for everyone else to see, then i think it'd be ok for the third kid (or anyone else) to destroy it.

i think gossip is way nastier than either of those two. i don't even like positive gossipping much because i think private information is for the owner to disperse at their own leisure; it's not my story to tell. i can excuse it as part of community building". but to stir up bad blood between people is definitely not laudable behaviour.

there are exceptions, but they all present dilemmas for me, and i need special circumstances to find it ethical to blow the whistle. frex a company secretly dumping toxic chemicals -- not a huge dilemma because it's not a private person doing private damage, but i'll still wonder about how to approach it, whether to first confront somebody privately. a person cheating on zir spouse, i know it, and am a friend of the spouse -- that sort of thing is much harder for me. when person A likes and trusts person B with secrets, and person B blabs them around and generally speaks ill of person A and IMO just stays close to find out dirt -- oy.

as to whether it's worse to write bad stuff in a private notebook but do so where others can see it, or for the person written about to destroy that writing -- i'd be hard pressed to decide. probably the writing, because it was careless, and it was what set the whole thing in motion.

I think it's probably one of those situations like parenting, where good enough really IS good enough, especially if they know you admit you can be wrong sometimes.

How would I pronounce lashon ha-ra?

About like it's written -- it's a transliteration, so it's an attempt to render in English phonemes a Hebrew word.

And then with the complicating factors of various accents and dialects in Hebrew, and that it's also a Yiddish word, almost any reasonable pronouciation you could make would be correct in SOME dialect. . .

I pronounce it as "la-SHOHN ha-RAH" -- accent on the second syllable in "lashon" and on the primary word in "ha-ra", all the "a" sounds as "ah" in "father", and the "o" as in "phone".

But, in one dialect of Yiddish, it'd come out more like, "LOYshen HOYrah", with the accents completely opposite, and several of the vowels changed.

Still, "la-SHON ha-RAH" is probably a pretty good way to do it.

You know I'm an Aussie and therefore probably have a good idea of my vowels...sooo...I'll follow your own pronunciation and hope it's okay.

My guess at the stressing wasn't right, but I suspected that might be the case.

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I yelled at my class today

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Total non sequitur, but...

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lashon hara

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