Respect is a quickly diminishing character quality without which a society can not effectively function. It is behind and understood to be part of every authority structure of all time. It goes hand in hand with self discipline, humility, and self denial. Yet, it is this area that is under attack.

I was recently attending a class in which this was made very plain and clear to me. One student, perhaps supported by others, decided that the teacher should let us out exactly on time and give us a break (for it was a three hour class) when he wanted. So, in the middle of the teacher’s discussion of a point, the student interrupts with “can we take our break now?” The teacher acquiesces to the student.

These students further demonstrated my point by talking all during the lecture. The teacher did stop to correct it, and since it did surprise and maybe embarrass them briefly, they stopped for the rest of the lecture. Near the end, the students tried to get out when they wanted, by saying that the class was supposed to end at 9:15pm. The sad thing was that the teacher interpreted the request as someone needed to leave at that time, though when I saw no hands raise when he asked if there was a need to leave right on time.

The point is that we have gotten to a stage in our society that we are so worried about quality and not hurting the person’s self-image that we have the selfish people ruling the day. There has been a movement to erase the difference between teens and adults in an effort to try to make the teens feel that they can talk to the adults, or that they are the same.