If there’s one group of people who collectively deserve more respect than they usually get it’s American public school teachers.
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A few of the teacher’s chuckled and said hi back. One gave a fist bump. Most stared directly at the student with a varying amounts of awkward silence before asking something about what are you doing or who are you talking to.
The students only response was to say the teachers name repeatedly with increasing emphasis on the name. Hi Ned. HI Ned. HI NED! while recording and continued to advance on the teacher.
I have done some extracurricular teaching and introduced myself by my first name. I also raised both of my kids to use my first name. I’m not into titles. Common respect or lack of respect can be communicated regardless of first name, last name or title used.
So like you, I am not hung up on formality, and I would say this kid is intentionally and aggressively being just this side of rude to get his video channel more views.
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It’s normal for kids to call their teachers by the first name here. It fosters a respect based community. Old fashioned schools controlled by patriarchical institutions such as churches seem to like honorifics though.
Fuck that. I call nobody “mister”. What do you have a revolution for?
Can’t see the video
The important thing isn’t whether you call someone by their first name or their last name. The important thing is that you call them by their preferred name and title. Anything less is disrespectful.
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Well, if their preferred name-and-title is within normal societal bounds, sure. If someone prefers the title Emperor, it is not disrespectful in the slightest to ignore the preference.
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God Emperor if you please.
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sometimes it’s the rest of the faculty and/or administration that set the standard. i planned to start going by my first name with my students and everyone else at school (i was teaching 6th grade at the time). the a few of the teachers got wildly freaked out about it and told the principal who also got bent out of shape about it and told me i was not allowed to do that because it would undermine the proper relationship of teacher and student and be disrespectful to the other teachers around me.
okay . . .
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We San Franciscans have a history of respecting such titles.
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THIS is a great technique for parsing out the normal human beings from the type A egoists and Men In Black-style aliens staffing one’s local high school.
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That was a cool guy. I keep thinking about buying one of his dollars… but I have plenty of dust collectors already.
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We’ll have to agree to disagree when I can breathe again 
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If you expect me to call you Mister Brainspore you’ll be disappointed…
It’s weird to expect kids to call people they spend half their waking day with Mr. or Ms. I mean next thing you’ll expect kids to call their da sir. Ugh. That’s creepy sounding when they do it in films. Creepy and sick.
And no. One side doesn’t get to just decide what the other side has to call them. That’s not respectful. If a kid calls me Mr. I get that it’s what they are comfortable with no matter how off it sounds to me. I will gently suggest if one calls me sir that this is a Republic and there are no sirs here.
Boy, you must be a joy at the doctor’s office.
A: “Hello Mr. McKenna, I’m Dr. Johnston.”
B: “Fuck that, you pompous ass. I’m just gonna call you Billy.”
For the record, I usually just ask my college students to address me by my first name. But I still live by the principle of addressing people by their preferred name and title because why the heck wouldn’t I?
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I worked very hard for my Ph.D., and when I’m in my role as professor, I represent not just myself but my whole field of study. I don’t think it’s outrageous to ask that people use an honorific in that environment.
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13-year old: “Huh, huh, you said ‘penal’ Huh, huh.”
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Again, the point here isn’t the kid being rude and masking it as being ‘edgy.’ It’s the fact that YOU DO NOT FILM PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION, and that alone should have gotten the young gentleman a few days off from the curriculum – or his phone privileges removed.
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It’s rather endearing, what counts as rebellion among the young, but really – here he is, playing with “authority” figures that have, in the world at large, very little power. I think I like the young journalist who stood up to a cop a lot more than this kid. Although, to be fair, I don’t dislike this kid. He’d probably be one of those college smart-asses I get along with. (Or that one freshman in every class who thinks he’s still in high school and doesn’t seem to get the hint when the other people in the class try to glare him down when he engages in his “hilarious antics”.)
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Some things about HS never change.
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Grade for Humor: F
Obviously, the purpose of this rather selfish stunt is to elicit and gauge the reaction of people who are effectively being ambushed during what appears to be their break time (a break time which, I assume, is hard earned since they have to deal with adolescents for a living). The teachers have likely come to expect a certain student/teacher relationship in their workplace, a relationship that they’ve probably gotten comfortable with, and in comes this joker whose goal is to take them out of their comfort zone and (worsening the situation) get it on video.
Still, the student’s prank is understandable; his brain is still developing, so certain behaviors (such as impulsiveness) should be expected. Someone should sit down with him, explain why what he did was inconsiderate, then perhaps throw in something regarding the science around teenagers and brain development… but, being a teenager, he just may not give a damn.
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