Why are teachers the "enemy"?

As I read our PDF on “Precarious Life” I was contemplating why the kids that I tutor are instantly against authority and go as far as to act out against it. What I see with my students is that everything the teacher says is seen as against the student. Through the reading I did find something that may explain this. “Our fear of understanding a point of view belies a deeper fear that we shall be taken up by it, find it contagious, become infected in a morally perilous way by the thinking of the presumed enemy.”(p.8)

The students are seeing the teacher (and all other authority figures/adults at the school) as an enemy. To be on the enemy’s side is, for them, going against their side (that of the students). The kids are afraid that if they even take into consideration what the teacher is saying then they will be going against their own kind. What the students don’t see (right away) is that the teachers are on their side and the discipline is all for their own good. Sometimes I see change in the students; they allow themselves to see things as the teacher sees things. Once the student has done this enough times their fear of being on the “dark side” goes away and they are left with students and teachers all working toward the same goal.

In speaking with one of the teachers at Phoenix I learned that it isn’t entirely the kids fault for being as disobedient as they are. She said that in meeting with the parents she found out that there was often no discipline or rules in the kids home life. When a kid is brought up being able to do whatever they want without the parents caring, one can’t expect them to show respect to any other adult in their life. “Our acts are not self generated, but conditioned. We are at once acted upon and acting, and our ‘responsibility’ lies in the juncture between the two” (p16)

We are the result of how we are brought up. We learn right and wrong from who we spend most of our time with. Our parents are supposed to tell us what is right and wrong…and if they don’t it is up to us to find the people who will tell us. Obviously we cannot blame bad parenting for everything that a kid does wrong, the kid does make the choice to do this action, “The forces that act upon us are not finally responsible for what we do.”(p.16) What we need to do, as a community is show kids through our own actions what is right and wrong. As for the parents, they need to go to some sort of camp that teaches them some good techniques of how to be a good parent!