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?

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

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.

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 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.

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?

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"?

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?

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