"Respect needs to be earned." Wot?

[liverbird10]

Does this phrase set anyone else's teeth on edge?

Is it not better to have the default position of respecting people until they give you a reason NOT to?

TAAT?

I'll say!

It's good to be respectful towards people generally, but actually having respect for someone is earned imo.

There are different meanings of the word "Respect" though. You can treat someone with respect, and this should be the default position until they give you reason not to.

And there's the sense of respect that you feel towards a person when they have impressed you in some way. That's the type of respect that has to be earned.

I treat my boss with respect because he's never done me any harm, and because we have to work together and doing otherwise would create a difficult working environment. But I don't actually feel any respect for him because he's largely incompetent, makes a lot of noise and mess without achieving anything and got where he is mostly by arse-licking.

@CaptainCabinets @forboaten

Of course it's not a TAAT.

It's @ TAAP (phrase.) Sillies.

@CaptainCabinets

It annoyed me too, I’m very much of the opinion that you respect people until they give you reason not to.

100% agree. Same with trust to a greater or lesser extent.

blueskiesandforests

Unsurprisingly I have found that its the line trotted out by 14 year olds when they are intent on disrupting a lesson and trying to get away with it.

Boney do you mean "Respect has to be earned" is trotted out by the 14 year olds, or "Are you disrespecting me? " / "Stop disrespecting me"?

I used to teach and usually started with the standpoint that the pupils should respect one another by following the rules about speaking in turn, letting classmates work in peace etc etc but never told them to respect me specifically. I never heard a teen argue that respect had to be earned - they were far more concerned about whether they personally were being respected / disrespected. Perhaps they have changed focus now (I stopped teaching about 15 years ago).

blueskiesandforests

Yes, I mean teenagers stating that they have to be respected whilst I have to "earn their respect".

Yes, I mean teenagers stating that they have to be respected whilst I have to "earn their respect"

Yes this is my experience too - if I dare to say they have been disrespectful to me. This was also sometimes echoed by their parents (if it went as far as parents).

I used to ask them

(a) how long this earning of respect would take, and
(b) what would happen in the meantime?

Did it mean that they could be rude and disruptive for, say, 6 weeks until I "earned" this respect? Or are there, as pp have said, two meanings to respect? All I wanted was for them to be polite to me and to each other and to not disrupt the learning of others. I would have thought you could afford that much respect to strangers. Apparently not though.