Teachers and students spend approximately 35 hours a week, 140 hours a month and a shocking 980 hours a year, not including extracurricular activities, interacting with one another.

Spending 980 hours with the same group of people can cause both positive effects, like strong relationships and making connections and negative effects, like irritation and disrespect.

Disrespectful students are something teachers have dealt with since Greek children were sent to school to learn how to read, write and speak.

Throughout history, teachers have experimented with numerous techniques to tame unruly students, and while some techniques seem to have stuck, disrespectful students continue to disrupt class and challenge teachers.

“I don’t think they [disrespectful students] are different than they’ve been in the past, although clearly the electronic devices available have gone up dramatically. I don’t think they are more disrespectful, but the ability to have an electronic distraction has allowed for that disrespect to show up in a different way,” English teacher Phillip Hamilton said.

As technology has improved over the years students have kept the traditional disrespectful activities but also invented new ways to disrespect teachers. One of these new techniques is using electronics, which have been adopted by students around the world.

One of the most common forms of electronic disrespect is texting. It is an easy and convenient way for people to connect with friends and family instantly. While some may argue that texting in class is not disrespectful, we must consider that texting causes students to become distracted and stop paying attention to the teacher. Not being completely tuned into a teacher is not uncommon, but still disrespectful.

Being a student myself, I know how tempting it is to send a quick text to a friend during an extraordinarily boring class, but I know when it is time to put up my phone and pay attention. Sadly, I have noticed that many of my peers have yet to learn this valuable lesson.

Respect is something everyone deserves, and while electronics contribute to a good amount of disrespect towards teachers, it shouldn’t have to take all of the blame. I would like to encourage all of my peers to rethink the way they treat teachers. The next time you start to send a quick text during chemistry, consider how it would make you feel if the classroom of people you were trying to educate, ignored you just so they could talk to their best friend.