Speak Up! - View Question #445

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Question: If a teacher yells at you for something you didn't do, do you have the right to yell back?

Answer: If a teacher yells at you, whether you did something that deserves yelling at or not, you are not breaking any laws if you yell back. However, you might be breaking some very important rules:

1) the social rules for your actions and

2) the school's conduct rules.

All societies have social rules. In our country we eat with forks and spoons, which is a social rule. People who do not follow social rules are frowned upon and likely to lose standing (not being promoted for jobs or considered for class president) because of their unwillingness to follow social rules.

In addition, schools, companies and organizations often have written conduct rules that are designed to promote good relationships and preserve order. Most school and company handbooks list rules that prohibit raising your voice or 'talking back' to your teacher or a person in authority. If you yell back at a teacher, you're likely to be violating the school's rule against yelling at teachers. This could result in disciplinary action against you - a written warning, detention or worse.

So you should think hard before you yell back to a teacher or adult in authority. Yelling is often a sign of being out of control. If you yell back, you would be acting similarly out of control. Even if you weren't facing discipline for yelling back, you would still be looked at better for handling your anger by ignoring someone yelling at you.


Comments
11 thru 15 of 19 comments
On 05/01/03
April from FL said:
I believe that all you people who think that it is unfair for a teacher to yell at you and you can't yell back are very immature. There has got to be a reason for the teacher to be yelling at you and if you don't believe you deserve it then go after class to the principal's office and tell him/her, so you can have a meeting with that teacher and the principal. It is very disrespectful to yell at a teacher, plus yelling won't get you anywhere excpet in troble and it will only make the teacher dissagree with you more so next time you think of yelling take a deep breath and talk nicely to the tea
On 04/28/03
Britni from WI said:
I think u should be able to yell at a teacher if they yell at u first!!
On 04/28/03
Keegan from IL said:
I think we should be able to yell at the teachers when they yell at u because when I yelled at a teacher she wrote me up
On 04/28/03
Britni from HI said:
Sup? I think that you should be able to yell at a teacher if they yell at ou cuz this one time I got in a fight with someone and a teacher started yelling at me, and so I yelled back at her and she wrote me up!! and the stupid thing about it was that I wasn't even using "bad words". But she was.
On 04/24/03
fd from AZ said:
I think we should be able to yell at teachers if they yell at u first
11 thru 15 of 19 comments



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