From Leaving CertiFiCate to Leaving SChooL a Longitudinal Study ...

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From Leaving Certificate to Leaving School
If you do the smallest, slight thing wrong and they go cracked at you.
(Park Street, boys’ school, mixed intake)
Although the reported frequency of negative interaction did not vary
markedly between working-class and other schools, students in many
working-class schools characterised their teachers as having a lack of
respect for them. Respect on the part of teachers for students was seen as
a fundamental prerequisite for students showing respect to teachers (see
Hemmings, 2003, on ‘fighting for respect’ in US urban high schools). In
the absence of such respect from teachers, students described an escalating
pattern of negative interaction between teachers and students:
Picking on every single detail like.
Small bit of noise and they make a big deal.
… Yeah, you’d make even more noise then like. (Hay Street, coed
school, working-class school)
Some described how their teachers addressed them as ‘you’ or by their
surname which they felt was disrespectful:
I’d be nice to the teachers if they’d be nice to me but if they are not
going to be nice to me I’m not going to be nice to them you know
what I mean.
Like calling you ‘you’ and all that.
… Hey you.
Calling you by [sur]name or something. (Barrack Street, girls’
school, working-class intake)
Students from the same working-class school also discussed how they
felt their teachers lacked respect and ‘looked down’ on them:
Interviewer: What do you think makes a bad teacher?
When they look down their nose at you and like that, make you feel
that you are less, you know what I mean.
It does my head in. (Barrack Street, girls’ school, working-class intake)