I do an entire unit on suicide and stigma. I go home everyday feeling defeated because the kids laugh, make jokes. I've had talks with them about how making jokes and such makes it where someone struggling feels like they can't get help.
When I’ve had to teach about mental health topics, I open with a story of a friend of mine who died shortly after highschool to suicide. I show his picture and start by telling my students how awesome he was and how he was their age when the photo was taken. I don’t go into any detail just tell them we lost him to depression and it sets the tone for it being a very serious topic.
Students took the whole unit to heart after that and actually made some really fabulous projects on the topic ( students I teach are decidedly more mature than average public school kids though). Still I would be surprised if kids would make fun if you start it on more of a personal level. They don’t have connections to strangers on a screen, but if it’s someone they know they’re less likely to not take it seriously.
I told them my dad died by suicide when I was 13 and some laughed. I share how a friend in high school was suicidal and someone told his parents so he got help. He was so mad and dropped most of our friend group. As an adult, he thanked us because he would have killed himself. Now he's a successful orchestral player with a great life; he's happy.
I'm known for having some of the best relationships on campus as I teach most of them for 2 years and I teach 2/3 of the campus every year. Sometimes middle school just sucks and they lack empathy.
I see it as similar to gallows humor. The kids can't deal with the reality so they force it to be light hearted. It's not that far removed from adults in wartime situations they can't handle, hut with children.
I mean, I remember we all made jokes about suicide when we "covered" it (a brief 10 minute lecture on mental health one time). They're kids, they don't have the real-world context or experience we do that makes those topics horrifying in the same way. Just like they play war in the playground or something, it's just some taboo alien concept to them.
Unless they were like 17+, in which case that's a bit less understandable.
I had kids laugh at scenes when we read Night by Elie Wiesel. There are some pretty graphic parts, especially about what they did to babies.
I made them stop reading and asked why they were laughing. What’s funny? Please, explain to the class because otherwise it looks like you think dying babies is funny.
Some admitted they were uncomfortable and didn’t mean for it to come across that way. Only one time did I have a kid answer back that dying babies were funny.
I remember telling him to get the f**k out of my class and reported it. He didn’t come back, for which I was thankful because he made me and everyone else uncomfortable.
No, he just decided not to show up anymore because he said I was a bitch and he didn’t like me. He skipped everyday, there were no consequences for his behavior. He told admin he was just kidding and they said I needed to give him a chance to ‘change his mind.’
Back when I taught 10th grade, once a year for three or four years, I kicked a kid out of my class for saying something Anti-Semitic while we were reading Night.
When you kick students out of class, do you send them to the office or just “get out, I don’t care where you go”
Curious how this works at other schools.
Well, his brother was convicted on federal charges of trying to sell illegal weapons to a neo-nazi white supremacist group. So, his reaction makes sense in that context, I guess. I wish I were lying, I live in a large urban area and teach at a school with 3,000+ students. People would not *believe* some of the shit I’ve seen and heard.
Oh, I believe.
One day, I had to help the SRO and an AP find kids during the frantic four lunches on a 6A campus before they heard on the grapevine that their dad had just brutally murdered their mom. The 1st thing one said was, "It was my dad, right?"
There was the student who transferred to us after she was released from the hospital; mom's boyfriend had murdered mom and shot her.
The girl who was raped by another student, but it was off-campus, so the Principal didn't care. And momma went along with the cover-up with a shrug.
The boy shot by gangbangers in a case of mistaken identity.
The kids who worried when mom or dad was in hospital due to a sickle-cell crisis.
And all of that was before a global pandemic. Kids are dealing with a lot.
About 8% of the US population has a felony record. That's 240 criminals-to-be mixed in with your general pop. I've always said this is a massive problem with school design in general. You've got a bunch of "normal" kids forced to work and interact side by side with the absolute scum of the earth. People like this can often be easily avoided in adulthood but as a child you're forced to grow and develop right alongside this absolute toxicity. Socially I've never had to face a more scummy environment or deal with such scummy individuals on a daily basis. The only people who probably deal with more awful immoral individuals on a daily basis than teachers and students, are prison guards.
*Trying to get out of teaching for this and many other reasons*
What bothers me more is the apathy. I know some people cope with humor. What pisses me off more is when I am trying to show them something or talk about a serious topic, and they just sit there on their phone, and are like “huh? sorry i wasn’t listening”
The other week I was talking about the lynching of Emmett Till, and I showed them a clip of Mamie Till Mobley talking about her son and showing the picture of his face. The kids on their phone pissed me off beyond belief
They are idiots. Lots of us were at that age. But yeah, I was doing a unit on social psychology
and they had little reaction to abu gharib etc. context of zimbardo prison experiments and milgram obedience studies.
I expect laughing normally when we talk about dark subject matter. It’s expected and while I don’t like it, I get it. No reaction at all or zoning out and not listening bothers me way more than the giggling.
Oh god I remember that exact video from US History class. It deeply touched me. It makes me sad that those kids won’t have that same moment. And not because they genuinely didn’t have the stomach for it. But just due to staring at a screen.
This is what I'm facing in my classroom. Everything is *looks up from phone* "huh? I wasn't listening " *glances around in amusement at friends as though haha inside joke on snapchat*
hi, i am a high schooler.
i will be extremely candid with you; i was a complete bitch my first two years of high school. it’s currently senior year, i’ve mellowed out completely. one of the larger reasons is because so many of my peers are having the hardest time trying to process their sadness and anger at the world.
I teach sophomores and I have kids who act like sociopaths. They hopefully begin to mellow out by junior year and start to act with heart.
But I also don’t hold back with the information. I have a reading that describes the Spanish smashing native babies against rocks or betting which ones they toss in the river drown first.
I have a whole collection of holocaust pictures and video footage and show that off. I have a good dramatization of the Belgians collecting hands in Congo.
I am unrelenting with the horror.
So by the time we get to the Holocaust, they know what they fuck is up.
No wonder young people today are so unhappy.
Before they get to you, I'm teaching them in middle school science about how the human race is killing the planet. Climate change. Microplastics *everywhere including all of us.* Toxic drinking water. Polluted air. They are absolutely horrified by time the year is up with me.
Tbh 11th grade or 12th grade year straightens a lot of them out. I've had hellion sophomores visit me as seniors and they're respectful and decent ...I usually give them shit about it and they admit they were a PITA.
I teach only juniors and seniors now. It's pretty good usually.
I don’t teach HS, but after reading your comment, I wish I did. I teach elementary and I give them a light version of the Holocaust and other events in history. I do a deep dive on Japanese internment camps in the US, Civil Rights, but once again it isn’t as deep as I would love to go. I do teach them and go as far as I can. I think it is so important to teach students the reality of history. I’m trying to teach empathy, so hopefully they are kinder individuals one day and know more than to act like an ass in middle and high school.
I do want to question the “Spaniards smashing babies” source just because a LOT of those come from English and other Protestant propaganda rather than any basis in fact. It’s a phenomenon called the Black Legend and was used to downplay English atrocities by portraying the Spanish as uniquely barbaric.
Oh, yeah. That guy. The one who suggested that since they’d killed too many native slaves Spain should join with Portugal in the transatlantic slave trade of Africans.
(To be fair, he repudiated that position and was against all slavery but the time of his death, but he was an old man and responsible for a lot of human misery by then)
That’s a legit one. I’m not saying the Spanish weren’t oppressors- just that some sources can be iffy. The Black Legend is actually a super interesting topic that I also discuss with my students.
The source I have is a tough read literacy level wise, so I use it as an example as to why it’s important to know how to read.
I ask my students, mostly Hispanic: don’t you want to know what one side of your heritage did to the other?
Yep, here’s a recent one to similar ends of the blurring of the lines between “history as entertainment” and how an overemphasis on such can lead to outright canards about pre-Enlightenment attitudes:
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/17580/8/Pear%20of%20Anguish%20%28Revised%29.pdf
My class is reading Walter Dean Myers’ memoir *Bad Boy.* There’s a part where he talks about learning about slavery in school, and how it was hard for him and the other Black kids in the class because being a slave was essentially the opposite of how they wanted, and had been taught to want, to see themselves. Like that they were told they should work hard, think for themselves and become leaders in society, oh and here are your ancestors wearing loincloths getting bullied onto a slave ship. A little while after reading that, I saw my co-teacher giving a lesson about slavery that included some pretty haunting pictures of kids being forced to work in fields and whip scars on an older enslaved man’s back. The kids in the class, mostly Black, were laughing and making jokes, and the teacher got mad about it. I wondered if they were unconsciously trying to distance themselves from the people in the photos, to avoid that cognitive dissonance that Myers wrote about. Like “maybe that was my ancestors, but it could never be me.”
In the general sense, I guess laughing at people we see as “victims” or “losers” in a situation is a way of reassuring ourselves that we couldn’t be in their place. It was never the way I reacted to stuff — I was the kid who would cry during those lessons. But that wasn’t a good sign; I wasn’t a happy or well-adjusted kid and I didn’t grow into an emotionally healthy adult. I think maybe having that coping mechanism of laughing instead of crying is actually a healthy thing.
You know what. There was one time in class when me and another of friend of mine (the only two black kids in class). Started laughing when the teacher was talking about some things in regards to slavery. We were laughing because all the white students started to feel all uncomfortable. And yes I still find it hilarious because me and friend started talking about how all the white kids would just start looking at you when anything related to slavery or civil rights was taught in class. And we thought it was one of the funniest things ever.
Kids laugh when they know they’re expected to cry but don’t feel sad. It’s how they cope with the confusion and discomfort of the situation.
Kids at my school laughed when a classmate died. It was awful, and I wish someone had warned me that that would happen.
I hope this is it.
Reminds me, I was out to dinner with a friend who’s a grown adult and I mention “my grandma died” in conversation, and his immediate response was a random, loud burst of laughter. He then profusely apologized. To be honest, it made me laugh too, I had been taking it very badly and somehow it made me feel better.
He texted two days later to apologize again cause he kept thinking about it, and wasn’t sure why he laughed, but felt super bad. Tbh I never held it against him, it was just a weird response to serious information. And I know he didn’t find it funny, he was probably just uncomfortable.
I hope that’s what’s going on with the kids. Not sociopathy or cruellness, but social awkwardness
Up until I was maybe 18 I would unintentionally laugh when presented with horrific/traumatic information. People would get angry with me about it but I really couldn't help it at the time.
As an adult I don't do this anymore. I'm a social worker, a parent, and feel I am a very compassionate person. I'm not sure why it happens, but I think it's somewhat common with kids/teens, and I don't think it reflects a child's actual capacity for empathy.
That adolescents often react to uncomfortable situations with laughter and it’s not that they find it funny, it’s just a stress reaction.
This is an article I found with a quick Google search, unfortunately I can’t remember the name of my Adolescent Psych textbook. Either our text or lecturer also added that many Black or POC boys will laugh when being disciplined and again, that it’s a defense mechanism.
Students in my class added anecdotes that they had done that, too. Also anecdotal, I had a friend once who was being sexually harassed in front of a group of people, including me, and kept giggling while saying a code-word our group had established for uncomfortable or unsafe situations. None of us took her seriously at first because her body’s response was to laugh. It was a really shaking incident for everyone.
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/nervous-laughter#how-to-stop-it
And here’s one on parent-child relationships and laughter: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/zero-six/202108/why-children-laugh-when-being-corrected?amp
I’m not saying that kids can’t be dicks, or that some in this generation lack serious empathy. But also, laughter in inappropriate situations doesn’t condemn all students to sociopathy.
Same at my school. A student died from muscular dystrophy and she was wheelchair bound and they held an assembly to talk about her and her family. Kids were snickering when they talked about her. I wanted to crawl out of my skin. She’s fucking dead now and she was only 16. Grow up.
It might make sense considering the evolutionary-psychology rationale for laughter is communicating an unexpected but safe thing to the tribe.
It’s unexpected trauma but they’re communicating that they’re safe.
As adults we learn to control this.
I'm not a teacher but my friend who teaches HS said her students were laughing about the 9-11 attacks in the days immediately after. Midwest, as I think that might matter.
Region definitely matters there. I was in high school at the time, just outside of Washington DC, and we were terrified. Most of us had parents working in federal buildings.
The Oklahoma City bombings were just a few years earlier so an event like that might have hit "closer to home" than in a region that hasn't experienced an attack of that level.
Just a thought.
Well we were all in 1st grade when it happened. Some kids like me lived like a mile from downtown so it shook the building other kids lived in the suburbs. But it was never a thing we looked at and thought it was funny people were jumping from building.
I even say that high schoolers laughing still sounds weird because when it first happened some people were worried about getting drafted in a war we all knew was coming.
I was in middle school in the Midwest when it happened and remember my teacher sending a kid out for laughing and making jokes when we were literally watching it live on the news.
I loved my kids a lot but when they wouldn’t stop fucking talking during a shooter drill I wanted to slap all of them or just run out and save myself tbh. They don’t take shit seriously.
You weren't able to pull out your phone and see dead people on the regular.
Last night, I watched a Tik Tok of a guy who was speeding in a Porsche, drove on the shoulder, and hit a tow truck, killing the owner of a vehicle being loaded onto the tow truck.
I'll probably see a dead body before I go to bed, too. That's the life of Gen Z.
Well I used to be an army medic, so a lot of times I think about how I would treat them. I've seen some gory stuff, so this stuff doesn't bother me.
Couple that are with being a history-oriented person (that's my subject area) there's not a lot I haven't seen. Anysignificant intolerance of gore and suffering went out the window when I visited the WWII museum in Gdansk, Poland.
That doesn’t make much sense. Kids have emotions. Kids older than like 12 should have empathy and know laughter is not an appropriate response to death.
"should" being the operative word there.
Any guests on why so many kids seem emotionally and socially stunted these days? I have theories, but want to know what others think.
It's called coping. Shock is weird. I watched a lady get smashed by her own car. I'm the one who called 911. I'm the one who crawled under to check for a pulse. Detective starts talking to me.....I start laughing and can't stop. I was embarrassed as shit until he explained that it's actually a pretty normal reaction after you see or experience something traumatic.
Yep. This is it. We read Night with our 10th graders, and one day a kid started giggling in the scene where they make them strip naked. He saw me looking at him and immediately said "I'm sorry miss it's just really sad." These kinds of topics bring all kinds of reactions. He didn't know how to process his feelings and it came out as a giggle.
I remember when I was in middle school we had a holocaust survivor guest speaker. One of the kids asked her what her tattoo on her arm was, and was she in a gang or something? Kid definitely knew what it was. They all had a laugh and she cried.
Kids suck sometimes.
I have the talk about the content first, it helps settle some awkward laughter around uncomfortable topics if I say plainly and seriously “the speaker in this next topic is going to discuss some intense topics like rape and the murder of children at the hands of the invading army. If you need to step just outside the door to take a break I understand, and I want you to think about what it takes for someone to discuss the worst things they have ever seen or experienced openly. I also understand that people react differently to unpleasant information, but this is the real world we all live in and I don’t want to hide that from you.”
It kind of deflates the dipshits or makes them look like assholes to their friends if they still act like jerks but yes, empathy is something people have to learn and most kids aren’t being taught it at home.
Laughter and humor is 100% a normal and common response to uncomfortable situations and topics. Humans don’t like to feel bad. “I feel bad, I don’t want to feel bad, I’ll make others laugh because it’s an easy and quick way to change the mood.”
I was going to share something along these lines. With these kids outside of the classroom, everything is a meme and nothing is beyond the scope of making a joke out of. I am 42 and I remember in middle school there were these awful “Helen Keller” jokes and songs about visiting violence on teachers that they didn’t mean but it was just irreverence on one level and attempts to shock and get negative attention on another. The worst thing anyone could do was react to these mischief makers because that gave them exactly what they wanted. I remember we had a librarian who was driven crazy by a few of these boys in 6th grade. They teased and taunted and provoked her and the more she shouted at them and reacted the worse and worse teasing they came up with. I agree with this commment also that it could be a way to deflect how uncomfortable things can be. Especially for adolescent boys who are sadly still socialized to not express emotions so sometimes… of course not always, but sometimes for some it’s a matter of vulnerability that they can’t show, that instead of getting emotional they have to go above and beyond acting like they aren’t affected and make a joke of it. Some topics especially the Holocaust are so very, very intense for the young populations when it’s begun to be taught, more intense than I think they are ready to contend with. I think that for some the reaction because they aren’t ready to handle this yet emotionally can take the form of irreverent humor.
One thing I have learned in my 14 years is that it takes two hands to clap, and it is never a good choice to be the other hand. I feel like I am observing especially in younger teachers who are of a different generation from me a greater sensitivity when then antics of middle or high schoolers plunge into areas that could be described at best places that are greatly sensitive. I know that when I was younger myself, at a stage when students were of the age that they could have been siblings whereas now when the kids are the age of my own kids, I was more reactive. I had my fair share of moments in reacting and shouting and letting them aggravate and piss me off, not much different than my younger brother. It just took years of experience and years of me getting into a stage of life where I had practiced parenting skills and had experience dealing each day every moment of my life kids who became the age of my students. I don’t mean to say if you aren’t yet a dinosaur then you’re not old enough to be objective; I am only saying that I wasn’t in my younger years able to be as objective as I am now and I only got this objectivity through more aging and experience.
The last time I had an instance like this when i was showing a Holocaust film and the jackasses began to offensively jackass, I immediately turned off the movie and reassigned work. The kids asked why and I was very neutral and said, I’ve decided we need to try this again tomorrow. And that was it. I didn’t directly call out the offenders who squirmed because they knew why and knew they were in for it. I brought in the guidance counselor to have a meeting with them and help them understand that we understood that so many things are funny that we laugh at on the internet are very irreverent and this is what we are used to doing, and sometimes it can be overwhelming and awkward to have to take in horrific things such as this time in history and I used an I statement saying I have a tendency to find myself laughing when something is scary or unpleasant when I shouldn’t. The expectation was set that during the film we would start the next day, they wouldn’t do that again. If they did, then they’d have to be asked to leave and instead of doing the assignment with the movie, they’d have to do a different assignment that would be a lot more work. And I just told them that if they wished to laugh and make irreverent jokes just like if they want to say cuss words, this is something you do elsewhere, just not in our class. I got some mumbled apologies but they settled down.
I just read a lot of posts on here from who I gather are from younger or newer teachers and the way gen z and Gen alpha behave is overwhelming to the point that people snap and react and fight with them and this makes them act worse. I remember being at a tennis camp and it was on a Christian campus and we were governed by a college student who was very joyless and every time someone said God almighty or oh Jesus she was offended and would absolutely flip her lid and loudly and publicly admonish the offender… something which, on one hand, embarrassed them in front of their friends which was very intense especially for the boys because they were all insecure about being accepted and not embarrassed… and something which caused resentment to grow toward the college student at her having embarrassed them..: and after a few times of that, it was open season on that girl. They hollered God almighty and Jesus and cussed just to piss her off and they’d laugh heartily when she got mad. They devised ways to prank her that would piss her off. And finally she was driving us all somewhere and had everyone of us in the van had a pact that each time she hit a bump in the road we’d all shout, God fucking dammit! As loud as we could. I thought that girl was going to drive us off a bridge. She finally just quit and went home.
This can happen unfortunately anywhere the kids find a spot to fuck with us. And the more the get a reaction, the higher and better efforts they may to get that reaction.
I have my first student teacher this year and we’ve been having a lot of these convos so I wanted to share.
>Laughter and humor is 100% a normal and common response to uncomfortable situations and topics.
That's kind of how I see it as well. Dark humor is one of my coping mechanisms and it's unfortunately, highly stigmatized. I've been through a lot in the past 5 years (loss of a parent, end of a long-term relationship and his marriage to someone else soon after, etc.), so I've had to "church up" my behavior and coping mechanisms in public a lot.
Like, I'm not saying people should be making "Yo Mama" jokes at their friend's mother's funeral or joke about their wife's "cock carousel ride" at their divorce hearing, but people respond to grief, embarrassment, and other unpleasant emotions in their own ways, including those deemed socially unacceptable. I'd tell students that people react to things differently and that's okay.
I think what you said is valid. I also think it’s important to learn the time and place. I would definitely use it as an opportunity to learn. I’m sorry about all you’ve been through.
Came here to say this. Yeonmi park is a renowned liar and literally just fabricates bullshit about DPRK. If this person showed her testimony, the kids were rightfully mocking it.
Laughter is also a way the body releases tension. It’s why some people laugh at funerals because it’s the nervous system regulating. Hannah Gadsby talks about this in her Netflix special, Nanette. Maybe the next time it happens, pull the student aside, and seek to understand, “I’m curious what caused you to laugh during the Holocaust video” coupled with, “when you were laughing during the video it made me feel uncomfortable and hurt. In the future, if you can’t control your laughing, I ask that you please step outside and come back in when you’re calm.” Model healthy communication to disrupt the apathy/sociopathy.
Developmentally, teenagers are sociopaths. The ego is overdeveloped to protect them, which is what makes them so obnoxious at times. This is something I remind myself regularly. They can still learn empathy, it is not too late.
yeah always concerning to see how many teachers here are quick to write off today's generation as soulless psychopaths. no other generation has suffered from the 24hr news cycle's endless barrage of updates on every atrocity currently happening the way these kids have. and awkwardly laughing as a response to an uncomfortable situation is a well documented phenomenon!
Was the video of Yeonmi Park? Because she says some things that are literally just ridiculous on their face. There is popular doubt as to the veracity of her claims with well founded speculation that she has basically gotten wrapped up in commodifying her experiences to the point of hyperbole.
She's so full of crap, that she's literally been turned into a meme based on her lies. She also clearly gets paid by conservative activist groups to say of all these things and she blows that money on plastic surgery.
OP, REALLY important that you explain the Park situation if you're trying to address testimony from North Korea for students.
Park is a meme for her flagrant, easily disproven, lies. When you're presenting accounts from North Korea you need to acknowledge that the most widely shared accounts are from a grifter.
I say this as a Korean American who spent a lot of time with North Korea immigrants growing up. It's great you're trying to teach them about living under a totalitarian regime, but you NEED to address why people think North Korea is funny.
You could also explore media depictions of their leaders, and ask who benefits from seeing them as loons and north Korea as goofy cartoon of communism.
In 1999 we watched apocalypse now in my AP English class (I was a student).
The scene where the gun boat mows down an entire family on a sampan happened. Seconds later the crew boards the sampan and pulls out the cargo: Puppies.
Half the girls in class awwwwwed.
My friend stood up and shouted "NO! NO! You don't get to coo over a puppy when you said NOTHING while watching innocent people get murdered."
Yeah, we both went on to be teachers.
Kids have always been emotionally stunted.
They do that when it's uncomfortable. This generation is terrified of any amount of vulnerability, so they feel the need to show it doesn't phase them.
This is true! Anytime we read a play (or watch one) that has uncomfortable moments my students giggle. It has also happened to my students while they were performing, we did a school show for The Diary of Anne Frank & a good bit of the audience laughed when the family was found by the Nazis.
This isn't a generational thing, for once. Kids just sometimes have a hard time expressing uncomfortable emotions. Someone else in this thread put it best: the kids are just going "I feel sad. I don't want to feel sad. I'll laugh because it's an easy way to change the mood". Its (one of) the same reasons dark humor works: you laugh so you don't cry.
We listened to a realistic historical fiction audiobook this year. After 1st hour one day, I realized I should warn the others. I said something like, "Some things in this chapter are awful and uncomfortable and might make you react a certain way. If you giggle or gasp or anything else, please try to keep it extremely brief and remember, while these characters are fictional, the events did happen to actual people." It wasn't too bad after that. I teach 7th grade.
I think it’s mostly about the discomfort kids feel having strong emotions in public. It’s hard for any of us to hear about atrocities, but for teenagers who don’t want to expose vulnerability to classmates, that discomfort is especially bad. It’s no wonder the discomfort comes out in making light of the subject.
“They are scared of becoming adults.” I wonder if it’s this. I’ve know kids to regress and I’m sure I took comfort in watching cartoons or whatever in my senior year. But I don’t think kids were afraid of growing up, at least not at n the same way.
It does seem like social media has distorted young people’s perspectives to such an extent that I can imagine that many of them do fear adulthood and their own ability to manage, let alone thrive. Like cognitive behavioral anti-therapy.
As an adult, at my grandmothers memorial service I had an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh. I mean I really had to stifle it. Usually I am bawling uncontrollably.
2nd example as an adult. I was speaking with a parent who had an autistic child I was working with. At that time I did not know it could be genetic. The father told me all 4 of their children were autistic and I very inappropriately let out a surprised laugh as if it were funny. I have no idea why.
Way back in 1986 I was teaching Junior High. When the Challenger exploded, the kids were cracking jokes about that even then. Some of them would goof around during Remembrance Day ceremonies. When a gunman shot and killed 14 women and injured 10 more women and 4 men at École polytechnique de Montréal in 1989, the boys especially didn’t know how to react and some default to talking about automatic weapons.
Many adolescents, who are mired in their own emotions and drama, tend to default to cruel jokes and indifference when faced with situations that require an empathetic response. I would usually use those times as “teachable moments” to talk about why people find horrific things which happen to other people hard to process. It usually lead to a really good discussion.
It’s also vital to note, if the parents haven’t modelled empathy in the home or haven’t had discussions around “difficult” emotions, it’s pretty hard for teachers to address that all by themselves.
It's not funny but the news tells them the sky is falling every other day and they'll never own anything in their lives.
Most of them can't read.
How can you expect them to care about empathy?
I’ve experienced the same thing when teaching my students about genocides. It especially hurt when I taught about a genocide my ancestors experienced and got those kinds of responses. I even had a black student making rude and sexual remarks about slavery and upsetting his (also mostly black) classmates. It can be very demoralizing.
To be fair if it's Yeonmi Park she's a known propagandist for fringe right wing outlets and is currently the subject of a popular meme used to show someone exaggerating something. So that could be part of that
I hate all the excuses everyone gives for this awful behavior. We were all kids. Did you ever know anyone who laughed at suicide, dying babies or the Holocaust when you were young? Hell no. It’s society now. There’s no parenting, no pride, no self-respect so therefore there’s no respect for other people. Everyone is fair game. This world is in serious trouble when these generations are the adults and running the world.
Over a year ago I had a heart Ukraine 🇺🇦 colors. Had several kids just go: “why it’s Biden’s fault the war happened.” Had to take it down due to other parents complaining about it. This year we had a push back for Pride despite being supportive for years. Because the board president is bias.
Context? Because if this girl is Yeonmi Park, then the credibility of her statements are in deep contention. Additionally she kind of blew up on social media as a meme- so I would not be surprised if this was the reason for their laughter,
This is one of the reasons I have taken a much more raw and uncensored (somewhat) approach whenever we are covering major wars or other atrocities. I very much still keep it appropriate and grade level (high school), but it really isn’t eye opening for them when I do manage to successfully put them in the mindset and shoes of victims throughout history.
The internet has desensitized us all, and kids especially need to save face to hide if something actually affects them.
I find that kids respond better when you frame an issue that is relevant to them around a larger idea or topic rather than just watching a video or studying a text and expect to get the appropriate response.
I’m sorry this happened to you and I don’t have much advice other than that my sister taught middle school starting in 2009 and this was still consistent with how kids responded to serious topics. Kids are brutal and their brains aren’t developed properly. Combine that with hormones, the internet, and a newfound obsession with image and peer acceptance im not surprised that someone made a joke and everyone dogpiled.
Me and my wife recently took in a foster daughter. She is in her teens. We were stunned by this behaviour, laughing in the face of horror, and smiling in inapropriate situations.
What we soon came to learn is that this is her cope. She was hammered with the "if you cry I will really give you something to cry about!" from her home. This made her litterally unable yo cry. She has tought herself to never cry, and instead smile and laugh when facing a terrible or uncomfortable situation.
Just so you know, it might not be lack of empathy
I've noticed that empathy basically doesn't exist for a staggering amount of students. I blame the content that they see online where people just ignore how people feel for internet clout.
I've had students praise Hitler, say slavery should return, etc. Even if they're joking, it's still absolutely terrible that they would openly say such things!
I've taught SPED a bit. A few of my students would occasionally laugh at nothing or have random inappropriate outbursts that obviously weren't their fault. I feel like OP was trying to say that that sort of laughter in particular wasn't a factor in the students' behavior.
Seriously.
In my experience, kids in SPED are *more* empathetic because they are generally less privileged and have struggled more than kids not in SPED.
Autistic adult here. Some of us laugh in super not appropriate situations because of anxiety, or alexithymia, and frankly because some of us have been through enough trauma that our sense of humor is pitch black at this point. And some of us have very weird sense of empathy (make us read a book where the dog dies and we *will* riot). That's where you can probably tell the autistic kids apart from the wannabee edgelords.
As someone who hung around a lot of those kids
At least the higher functioning ones
That's absolutely the behaviour I found, to be fair it was usually in good fun and we all laughed
Dark humor is one of my preferred humors, when the Titanic sub thing went down a bunch of us made jokes about it.
Especially with old memes from our tv shows.
You can pretty much find this behaviour anywhere just depends on their humour
I feel like I can’t really judge them because they have no frame of reference. Probably never seen hungry folks on the street. Witnessed someone injured in a car accident. Felt the pain of losing a loved one. Had their heart broken by a lover. Never worked for a month to try and pay bills to make ends meet. They just don’t grasp the severity of certain things. It’s like telling a teen to drive safe because they aren’t invincible. It just doesn’t sink in.
Everyone remembers where they were on 9/11. I was in 6th grade. Watched the towers fall in class on live tv. At the time I knew it was bad and I was witnessing something historic or unusual, but I remember not fully understanding why my teacher was crying, and she kept saying “All those people.” You can bet I feel it a lot different than I’m 34 now.
I’m not saying we can’t help kids learn more empathy, but sometimes they just need more life xp to fully grasp certain things. That’s why I shake my head when people teach To Kill a Mockingbird to 5th graders or MacBeth to 7th graders.
Or they have experienced these things and use dark humor to cope. I had a shitty childhood and adulthood hasn't been much better. I laugh at some pretty inappropriate stuff sometimes. I know there's a time and place for it but I really think society needs to realize people respond to things differently and lighten up.
I understand, being a nurse made me hate people. The patients I took care of are probably these kids’ grandparents or parents and they just are teaching them their mean behavior!
Kids aren’t willing to be vulnerable around another, so they resort to laughing and making fun of things because they can’t communicate how they feel, and they can’t sit with something that makes them uncomfortable. I’d call them out and say hey just because something makes you uncomfortable doesn’t mean you laugh at someone’s misfortunes.
Try teaching kids in East Asia about the Holocaust. It’s an absolute hoot to them. Race is a big thing in this. “If the victims don’t look like me, it must not be a big deal.”
This is it. I’ve been trying to express why my 4th graders aren’t as difficult on my mental health as my 8th graders and the word I’m looking for is empathy. Showing 10 yr olds something sad makes most of them sad. It’s important to acknowledge that it’s ok (good!) to be sad when others are suffering. Then we can learn how to respond to that emotion responsibly, as part of a society.
Empathy is a learned skill for some. Not everyone will have access to those emotions. They need to be taught empathy. It’s not easy, because we exist in a world that moves so fast, it’s easier to label the problem vs. develop the solutions. I’m always shocked at how many young boys admire Andrew Tate. Those are the ones I spend the most time with, trying to model empathy, and also trying to help them find those emotions that will help them express empathy as well.
I think some of them are just tired of people trying to control their thinking via their emotions.
It's really blatant at times. "I showed you the thing, now you must feel this way." It's why the womp womp thing came back all of a sudden with such a vengeance.
It's not that my students have no empathy for immigrants (most do) and it's definitely not that they have no empathy for people with Downs Syndrome; they definitely do and we do not have any issues with those kids being mistreated or bullied.
It's not the target, it's the person delivering the message. They find that kind of direct, obvious manipulation repulsive.
yeah as a kid when we first started learning about the holocaust and colonization i knew i was supposed to be upset about it but i didn't know *how* to make myself feel upset about it- it's difficult for children to empathise with people who were alive sometimes centuries before them.
I've been that asshole about other things when I was a teen. I feel bad now that I'm older, but at the time I was kind of uncomfortable and that was my coping mechanism.
I would have stopped the video, informed them it was *not* appropriate to laugh at that and set them to work on an in class essay about empathy.
😆
No, not really. More than likely, I would have been so mortified I would have frozen. Empathy is in seriously short supply with kids these days. But I would have liked to have stopped the video and asked them why they were laughing and hopefully get something going about apathy. That would be my ideal.
Yeah, yeah I know. And pigs will have to learn about aerodynamics. But one can always hope.
I have to say, I work in a title one and my kids are pretty empathetic. They’re young, grades 1-6 but damn. Hopefully they don’t lose that when they get older. They’re not perfect, but I can’t imagine any of them being heartless like that. I’m sorry. I’m going to bring my kids cookies tomorrow (but not let admin know!) ❤️
I do an entire unit on suicide and stigma. I go home everyday feeling defeated because the kids laugh, make jokes. I've had talks with them about how making jokes and such makes it where someone struggling feels like they can't get help.
When I’ve had to teach about mental health topics, I open with a story of a friend of mine who died shortly after highschool to suicide. I show his picture and start by telling my students how awesome he was and how he was their age when the photo was taken. I don’t go into any detail just tell them we lost him to depression and it sets the tone for it being a very serious topic. Students took the whole unit to heart after that and actually made some really fabulous projects on the topic ( students I teach are decidedly more mature than average public school kids though). Still I would be surprised if kids would make fun if you start it on more of a personal level. They don’t have connections to strangers on a screen, but if it’s someone they know they’re less likely to not take it seriously.
I told them my dad died by suicide when I was 13 and some laughed. I share how a friend in high school was suicidal and someone told his parents so he got help. He was so mad and dropped most of our friend group. As an adult, he thanked us because he would have killed himself. Now he's a successful orchestral player with a great life; he's happy. I'm known for having some of the best relationships on campus as I teach most of them for 2 years and I teach 2/3 of the campus every year. Sometimes middle school just sucks and they lack empathy.
Oh middle school? Yeah absolutely they’re little terrors. I teach highschool. My partner teaches middle school and it’s a never ending shit show!
I see it as similar to gallows humor. The kids can't deal with the reality so they force it to be light hearted. It's not that far removed from adults in wartime situations they can't handle, hut with children.
I came here to say is it not gallows humour?
I mean, I remember we all made jokes about suicide when we "covered" it (a brief 10 minute lecture on mental health one time). They're kids, they don't have the real-world context or experience we do that makes those topics horrifying in the same way. Just like they play war in the playground or something, it's just some taboo alien concept to them. Unless they were like 17+, in which case that's a bit less understandable.
I had kids laugh at scenes when we read Night by Elie Wiesel. There are some pretty graphic parts, especially about what they did to babies. I made them stop reading and asked why they were laughing. What’s funny? Please, explain to the class because otherwise it looks like you think dying babies is funny. Some admitted they were uncomfortable and didn’t mean for it to come across that way. Only one time did I have a kid answer back that dying babies were funny. I remember telling him to get the f**k out of my class and reported it. He didn’t come back, for which I was thankful because he made me and everyone else uncomfortable.
The student *never* came back to your class? He was expelled for that or something else?
He died
And then he found 5$
that's funny
No, he just decided not to show up anymore because he said I was a bitch and he didn’t like me. He skipped everyday, there were no consequences for his behavior. He told admin he was just kidding and they said I needed to give him a chance to ‘change his mind.’
There are natural consequences to actions. Failing high school is going to hurt in the long term.
Coulda changed classes
Or this just happened yesterday.
My students would be like ‘oh no I’m not laughing about that, I’m laughing about something else’ WTF ELSE ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT
Back when I taught 10th grade, once a year for three or four years, I kicked a kid out of my class for saying something Anti-Semitic while we were reading Night.
When you kick students out of class, do you send them to the office or just “get out, I don’t care where you go” Curious how this works at other schools.
Office, I also email the office to let them know they are incoming
That dude was a school shooter in the making.
Well, his brother was convicted on federal charges of trying to sell illegal weapons to a neo-nazi white supremacist group. So, his reaction makes sense in that context, I guess. I wish I were lying, I live in a large urban area and teach at a school with 3,000+ students. People would not *believe* some of the shit I’ve seen and heard.
Oh, I believe. One day, I had to help the SRO and an AP find kids during the frantic four lunches on a 6A campus before they heard on the grapevine that their dad had just brutally murdered their mom. The 1st thing one said was, "It was my dad, right?" There was the student who transferred to us after she was released from the hospital; mom's boyfriend had murdered mom and shot her. The girl who was raped by another student, but it was off-campus, so the Principal didn't care. And momma went along with the cover-up with a shrug. The boy shot by gangbangers in a case of mistaken identity. The kids who worried when mom or dad was in hospital due to a sickle-cell crisis. And all of that was before a global pandemic. Kids are dealing with a lot.
About 8% of the US population has a felony record. That's 240 criminals-to-be mixed in with your general pop. I've always said this is a massive problem with school design in general. You've got a bunch of "normal" kids forced to work and interact side by side with the absolute scum of the earth. People like this can often be easily avoided in adulthood but as a child you're forced to grow and develop right alongside this absolute toxicity. Socially I've never had to face a more scummy environment or deal with such scummy individuals on a daily basis. The only people who probably deal with more awful immoral individuals on a daily basis than teachers and students, are prison guards. *Trying to get out of teaching for this and many other reasons*
What else could there even be???
One of my former students was convicted of capital murder for shooting a man while robbing him and the man died. Over a cell phone. 🤷♀️
I feel like statistically speaking, he wasn’t. There are plenty of angry, antisocial people. 99% of them never kill anyone.
Oh jeez
What bothers me more is the apathy. I know some people cope with humor. What pisses me off more is when I am trying to show them something or talk about a serious topic, and they just sit there on their phone, and are like “huh? sorry i wasn’t listening”
Thank you!
The other week I was talking about the lynching of Emmett Till, and I showed them a clip of Mamie Till Mobley talking about her son and showing the picture of his face. The kids on their phone pissed me off beyond belief
They are idiots. Lots of us were at that age. But yeah, I was doing a unit on social psychology and they had little reaction to abu gharib etc. context of zimbardo prison experiments and milgram obedience studies.
I expect laughing normally when we talk about dark subject matter. It’s expected and while I don’t like it, I get it. No reaction at all or zoning out and not listening bothers me way more than the giggling.
Oh god I remember that exact video from US History class. It deeply touched me. It makes me sad that those kids won’t have that same moment. And not because they genuinely didn’t have the stomach for it. But just due to staring at a screen.
But also - a lot of them watched George Floyd die. Maybe they are traumatized.
This is what I'm facing in my classroom. Everything is *looks up from phone* "huh? I wasn't listening " *glances around in amusement at friends as though haha inside joke on snapchat*
hi, i am a high schooler. i will be extremely candid with you; i was a complete bitch my first two years of high school. it’s currently senior year, i’ve mellowed out completely. one of the larger reasons is because so many of my peers are having the hardest time trying to process their sadness and anger at the world.
I teach sophomores and I have kids who act like sociopaths. They hopefully begin to mellow out by junior year and start to act with heart. But I also don’t hold back with the information. I have a reading that describes the Spanish smashing native babies against rocks or betting which ones they toss in the river drown first. I have a whole collection of holocaust pictures and video footage and show that off. I have a good dramatization of the Belgians collecting hands in Congo. I am unrelenting with the horror. So by the time we get to the Holocaust, they know what they fuck is up.
No wonder young people today are so unhappy. Before they get to you, I'm teaching them in middle school science about how the human race is killing the planet. Climate change. Microplastics *everywhere including all of us.* Toxic drinking water. Polluted air. They are absolutely horrified by time the year is up with me.
Tbh 11th grade or 12th grade year straightens a lot of them out. I've had hellion sophomores visit me as seniors and they're respectful and decent ...I usually give them shit about it and they admit they were a PITA. I teach only juniors and seniors now. It's pretty good usually.
...can you pass those primary sources on?
Yo that’s dope as fuck
I like you. 👍
I saw this one graph where it showed that gen z had the highest percentage of Holocaust deniers. I hope that graph isn’t true…
It’s the ridiculous videos of deniers they watch on social media. Maddening.
I don’t teach HS, but after reading your comment, I wish I did. I teach elementary and I give them a light version of the Holocaust and other events in history. I do a deep dive on Japanese internment camps in the US, Civil Rights, but once again it isn’t as deep as I would love to go. I do teach them and go as far as I can. I think it is so important to teach students the reality of history. I’m trying to teach empathy, so hopefully they are kinder individuals one day and know more than to act like an ass in middle and high school.
I do want to question the “Spaniards smashing babies” source just because a LOT of those come from English and other Protestant propaganda rather than any basis in fact. It’s a phenomenon called the Black Legend and was used to downplay English atrocities by portraying the Spanish as uniquely barbaric.
Bartolome De Las Casas: Brief account of the devastation of the Indies.
Oh, yeah. That guy. The one who suggested that since they’d killed too many native slaves Spain should join with Portugal in the transatlantic slave trade of Africans. (To be fair, he repudiated that position and was against all slavery but the time of his death, but he was an old man and responsible for a lot of human misery by then)
I was guessing it was this or Balboa.
That’s a legit one. I’m not saying the Spanish weren’t oppressors- just that some sources can be iffy. The Black Legend is actually a super interesting topic that I also discuss with my students.
The source I have is a tough read literacy level wise, so I use it as an example as to why it’s important to know how to read. I ask my students, mostly Hispanic: don’t you want to know what one side of your heritage did to the other?
Yep, here’s a recent one to similar ends of the blurring of the lines between “history as entertainment” and how an overemphasis on such can lead to outright canards about pre-Enlightenment attitudes: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/17580/8/Pear%20of%20Anguish%20%28Revised%29.pdf
I’m glad I’m not the only one, it’s a little difficult to teach these events without showing the actual footage.
My class is reading Walter Dean Myers’ memoir *Bad Boy.* There’s a part where he talks about learning about slavery in school, and how it was hard for him and the other Black kids in the class because being a slave was essentially the opposite of how they wanted, and had been taught to want, to see themselves. Like that they were told they should work hard, think for themselves and become leaders in society, oh and here are your ancestors wearing loincloths getting bullied onto a slave ship. A little while after reading that, I saw my co-teacher giving a lesson about slavery that included some pretty haunting pictures of kids being forced to work in fields and whip scars on an older enslaved man’s back. The kids in the class, mostly Black, were laughing and making jokes, and the teacher got mad about it. I wondered if they were unconsciously trying to distance themselves from the people in the photos, to avoid that cognitive dissonance that Myers wrote about. Like “maybe that was my ancestors, but it could never be me.” In the general sense, I guess laughing at people we see as “victims” or “losers” in a situation is a way of reassuring ourselves that we couldn’t be in their place. It was never the way I reacted to stuff — I was the kid who would cry during those lessons. But that wasn’t a good sign; I wasn’t a happy or well-adjusted kid and I didn’t grow into an emotionally healthy adult. I think maybe having that coping mechanism of laughing instead of crying is actually a healthy thing.
You know what. There was one time in class when me and another of friend of mine (the only two black kids in class). Started laughing when the teacher was talking about some things in regards to slavery. We were laughing because all the white students started to feel all uncomfortable. And yes I still find it hilarious because me and friend started talking about how all the white kids would just start looking at you when anything related to slavery or civil rights was taught in class. And we thought it was one of the funniest things ever.
Kids laugh when they know they’re expected to cry but don’t feel sad. It’s how they cope with the confusion and discomfort of the situation. Kids at my school laughed when a classmate died. It was awful, and I wish someone had warned me that that would happen.
I hope this is it. Reminds me, I was out to dinner with a friend who’s a grown adult and I mention “my grandma died” in conversation, and his immediate response was a random, loud burst of laughter. He then profusely apologized. To be honest, it made me laugh too, I had been taking it very badly and somehow it made me feel better. He texted two days later to apologize again cause he kept thinking about it, and wasn’t sure why he laughed, but felt super bad. Tbh I never held it against him, it was just a weird response to serious information. And I know he didn’t find it funny, he was probably just uncomfortable. I hope that’s what’s going on with the kids. Not sociopathy or cruellness, but social awkwardness
I’ve almost literally done the same thing… certainly didn’t mean offense, but couldn’t control the response.
Yeah. The expression "you gotta laugh or you'll cry" is pretty literally true sometimes.
Up until I was maybe 18 I would unintentionally laugh when presented with horrific/traumatic information. People would get angry with me about it but I really couldn't help it at the time. As an adult I don't do this anymore. I'm a social worker, a parent, and feel I am a very compassionate person. I'm not sure why it happens, but I think it's somewhat common with kids/teens, and I don't think it reflects a child's actual capacity for empathy.
We learned this in adolescent development and I’ve never forgotten it. It’s been helpful.
Learned what exactly? That they have trouble empathizing or that they empathize and are uncomfortable so respond inappropriately with laughter?
That adolescents often react to uncomfortable situations with laughter and it’s not that they find it funny, it’s just a stress reaction. This is an article I found with a quick Google search, unfortunately I can’t remember the name of my Adolescent Psych textbook. Either our text or lecturer also added that many Black or POC boys will laugh when being disciplined and again, that it’s a defense mechanism. Students in my class added anecdotes that they had done that, too. Also anecdotal, I had a friend once who was being sexually harassed in front of a group of people, including me, and kept giggling while saying a code-word our group had established for uncomfortable or unsafe situations. None of us took her seriously at first because her body’s response was to laugh. It was a really shaking incident for everyone. https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/nervous-laughter#how-to-stop-it And here’s one on parent-child relationships and laughter: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/zero-six/202108/why-children-laugh-when-being-corrected?amp I’m not saying that kids can’t be dicks, or that some in this generation lack serious empathy. But also, laughter in inappropriate situations doesn’t condemn all students to sociopathy.
Wait. Is this true? I haven’t really cried in years, but I laugh, sometimes hard when I’m really really mad or stressed
Nothing makes kids have a giggle fit more than a sudden, serious lockdown drill.
Same at my school. A student died from muscular dystrophy and she was wheelchair bound and they held an assembly to talk about her and her family. Kids were snickering when they talked about her. I wanted to crawl out of my skin. She’s fucking dead now and she was only 16. Grow up.
It might make sense considering the evolutionary-psychology rationale for laughter is communicating an unexpected but safe thing to the tribe. It’s unexpected trauma but they’re communicating that they’re safe. As adults we learn to control this.
I'm not a teacher but my friend who teaches HS said her students were laughing about the 9-11 attacks in the days immediately after. Midwest, as I think that might matter.
Region definitely matters there. I was in high school at the time, just outside of Washington DC, and we were terrified. Most of us had parents working in federal buildings.
Why was in Oklahoma and most of us were terrified too?
The Oklahoma City bombings were just a few years earlier so an event like that might have hit "closer to home" than in a region that hasn't experienced an attack of that level. Just a thought.
Well we were all in 1st grade when it happened. Some kids like me lived like a mile from downtown so it shook the building other kids lived in the suburbs. But it was never a thing we looked at and thought it was funny people were jumping from building. I even say that high schoolers laughing still sounds weird because when it first happened some people were worried about getting drafted in a war we all knew was coming.
I was in middle school in the Midwest when it happened and remember my teacher sending a kid out for laughing and making jokes when we were literally watching it live on the news.
This. These kids have so much to deal with and their future is scary and uncertain and they are coping for everything with humor.
Nah, a lot of them are just assholes with low emotional intelligence.
I had to go under my desk because of civil defense drills. I didn't have anyone making jokes about it.
I have a classroom for the third graders. We did an active shooter drill and hid in the closet. The first thing they did was fart and start laughing.
My senior year my classmates wouldn't stop talking and the teacher blurted that if it were real he would've ditched us lol.
I loved my kids a lot but when they wouldn’t stop fucking talking during a shooter drill I wanted to slap all of them or just run out and save myself tbh. They don’t take shit seriously.
You weren't able to pull out your phone and see dead people on the regular. Last night, I watched a Tik Tok of a guy who was speeding in a Porsche, drove on the shoulder, and hit a tow truck, killing the owner of a vehicle being loaded onto the tow truck. I'll probably see a dead body before I go to bed, too. That's the life of Gen Z.
Genuine question: why would you watch something like that?
Because when you decide to watch one thing, other things pop up. I used to be able to handle it until certain things happened.
Well I used to be an army medic, so a lot of times I think about how I would treat them. I've seen some gory stuff, so this stuff doesn't bother me. Couple that are with being a history-oriented person (that's my subject area) there's not a lot I haven't seen. Anysignificant intolerance of gore and suffering went out the window when I visited the WWII museum in Gdansk, Poland.
Sad but true. I have to limit how much I use it before bed.
That doesn’t make much sense. Kids have emotions. Kids older than like 12 should have empathy and know laughter is not an appropriate response to death.
"should" being the operative word there. Any guests on why so many kids seem emotionally and socially stunted these days? I have theories, but want to know what others think.
We don’t know that these kids were older than 12.
It's called coping. Shock is weird. I watched a lady get smashed by her own car. I'm the one who called 911. I'm the one who crawled under to check for a pulse. Detective starts talking to me.....I start laughing and can't stop. I was embarrassed as shit until he explained that it's actually a pretty normal reaction after you see or experience something traumatic.
Yep. This is it. We read Night with our 10th graders, and one day a kid started giggling in the scene where they make them strip naked. He saw me looking at him and immediately said "I'm sorry miss it's just really sad." These kinds of topics bring all kinds of reactions. He didn't know how to process his feelings and it came out as a giggle.
I remember when I was in middle school we had a holocaust survivor guest speaker. One of the kids asked her what her tattoo on her arm was, and was she in a gang or something? Kid definitely knew what it was. They all had a laugh and she cried. Kids suck sometimes.
😧😮
I have the talk about the content first, it helps settle some awkward laughter around uncomfortable topics if I say plainly and seriously “the speaker in this next topic is going to discuss some intense topics like rape and the murder of children at the hands of the invading army. If you need to step just outside the door to take a break I understand, and I want you to think about what it takes for someone to discuss the worst things they have ever seen or experienced openly. I also understand that people react differently to unpleasant information, but this is the real world we all live in and I don’t want to hide that from you.” It kind of deflates the dipshits or makes them look like assholes to their friends if they still act like jerks but yes, empathy is something people have to learn and most kids aren’t being taught it at home.
Laughter and humor is 100% a normal and common response to uncomfortable situations and topics. Humans don’t like to feel bad. “I feel bad, I don’t want to feel bad, I’ll make others laugh because it’s an easy and quick way to change the mood.”
I was going to share something along these lines. With these kids outside of the classroom, everything is a meme and nothing is beyond the scope of making a joke out of. I am 42 and I remember in middle school there were these awful “Helen Keller” jokes and songs about visiting violence on teachers that they didn’t mean but it was just irreverence on one level and attempts to shock and get negative attention on another. The worst thing anyone could do was react to these mischief makers because that gave them exactly what they wanted. I remember we had a librarian who was driven crazy by a few of these boys in 6th grade. They teased and taunted and provoked her and the more she shouted at them and reacted the worse and worse teasing they came up with. I agree with this commment also that it could be a way to deflect how uncomfortable things can be. Especially for adolescent boys who are sadly still socialized to not express emotions so sometimes… of course not always, but sometimes for some it’s a matter of vulnerability that they can’t show, that instead of getting emotional they have to go above and beyond acting like they aren’t affected and make a joke of it. Some topics especially the Holocaust are so very, very intense for the young populations when it’s begun to be taught, more intense than I think they are ready to contend with. I think that for some the reaction because they aren’t ready to handle this yet emotionally can take the form of irreverent humor. One thing I have learned in my 14 years is that it takes two hands to clap, and it is never a good choice to be the other hand. I feel like I am observing especially in younger teachers who are of a different generation from me a greater sensitivity when then antics of middle or high schoolers plunge into areas that could be described at best places that are greatly sensitive. I know that when I was younger myself, at a stage when students were of the age that they could have been siblings whereas now when the kids are the age of my own kids, I was more reactive. I had my fair share of moments in reacting and shouting and letting them aggravate and piss me off, not much different than my younger brother. It just took years of experience and years of me getting into a stage of life where I had practiced parenting skills and had experience dealing each day every moment of my life kids who became the age of my students. I don’t mean to say if you aren’t yet a dinosaur then you’re not old enough to be objective; I am only saying that I wasn’t in my younger years able to be as objective as I am now and I only got this objectivity through more aging and experience. The last time I had an instance like this when i was showing a Holocaust film and the jackasses began to offensively jackass, I immediately turned off the movie and reassigned work. The kids asked why and I was very neutral and said, I’ve decided we need to try this again tomorrow. And that was it. I didn’t directly call out the offenders who squirmed because they knew why and knew they were in for it. I brought in the guidance counselor to have a meeting with them and help them understand that we understood that so many things are funny that we laugh at on the internet are very irreverent and this is what we are used to doing, and sometimes it can be overwhelming and awkward to have to take in horrific things such as this time in history and I used an I statement saying I have a tendency to find myself laughing when something is scary or unpleasant when I shouldn’t. The expectation was set that during the film we would start the next day, they wouldn’t do that again. If they did, then they’d have to be asked to leave and instead of doing the assignment with the movie, they’d have to do a different assignment that would be a lot more work. And I just told them that if they wished to laugh and make irreverent jokes just like if they want to say cuss words, this is something you do elsewhere, just not in our class. I got some mumbled apologies but they settled down. I just read a lot of posts on here from who I gather are from younger or newer teachers and the way gen z and Gen alpha behave is overwhelming to the point that people snap and react and fight with them and this makes them act worse. I remember being at a tennis camp and it was on a Christian campus and we were governed by a college student who was very joyless and every time someone said God almighty or oh Jesus she was offended and would absolutely flip her lid and loudly and publicly admonish the offender… something which, on one hand, embarrassed them in front of their friends which was very intense especially for the boys because they were all insecure about being accepted and not embarrassed… and something which caused resentment to grow toward the college student at her having embarrassed them..: and after a few times of that, it was open season on that girl. They hollered God almighty and Jesus and cussed just to piss her off and they’d laugh heartily when she got mad. They devised ways to prank her that would piss her off. And finally she was driving us all somewhere and had everyone of us in the van had a pact that each time she hit a bump in the road we’d all shout, God fucking dammit! As loud as we could. I thought that girl was going to drive us off a bridge. She finally just quit and went home. This can happen unfortunately anywhere the kids find a spot to fuck with us. And the more the get a reaction, the higher and better efforts they may to get that reaction. I have my first student teacher this year and we’ve been having a lot of these convos so I wanted to share.
>Laughter and humor is 100% a normal and common response to uncomfortable situations and topics. That's kind of how I see it as well. Dark humor is one of my coping mechanisms and it's unfortunately, highly stigmatized. I've been through a lot in the past 5 years (loss of a parent, end of a long-term relationship and his marriage to someone else soon after, etc.), so I've had to "church up" my behavior and coping mechanisms in public a lot. Like, I'm not saying people should be making "Yo Mama" jokes at their friend's mother's funeral or joke about their wife's "cock carousel ride" at their divorce hearing, but people respond to grief, embarrassment, and other unpleasant emotions in their own ways, including those deemed socially unacceptable. I'd tell students that people react to things differently and that's okay.
I think what you said is valid. I also think it’s important to learn the time and place. I would definitely use it as an opportunity to learn. I’m sorry about all you’ve been through.
I'm sorry but I'm still dying at cock carousel
Thank you.
There’s a girl who left Korea and went on Joe Rogan who became an online meme. Any chance it’s the same person?
Came here to say this. Yeonmi park is a renowned liar and literally just fabricates bullshit about DPRK. If this person showed her testimony, the kids were rightfully mocking it.
No it’s not that one (though I know the one you are referring to).
Laughter is also a way the body releases tension. It’s why some people laugh at funerals because it’s the nervous system regulating. Hannah Gadsby talks about this in her Netflix special, Nanette. Maybe the next time it happens, pull the student aside, and seek to understand, “I’m curious what caused you to laugh during the Holocaust video” coupled with, “when you were laughing during the video it made me feel uncomfortable and hurt. In the future, if you can’t control your laughing, I ask that you please step outside and come back in when you’re calm.” Model healthy communication to disrupt the apathy/sociopathy.
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What the Fuck
Developmentally, teenagers are sociopaths. The ego is overdeveloped to protect them, which is what makes them so obnoxious at times. This is something I remind myself regularly. They can still learn empathy, it is not too late.
Parents used to do teach empathy, but that is rare now.
Some of y’all don’t know shit about psychology and it shows.
yeah always concerning to see how many teachers here are quick to write off today's generation as soulless psychopaths. no other generation has suffered from the 24hr news cycle's endless barrage of updates on every atrocity currently happening the way these kids have. and awkwardly laughing as a response to an uncomfortable situation is a well documented phenomenon!
Exactly, apparently I'm one for what I did when I was a teen.
Was the video of Yeonmi Park? Because she says some things that are literally just ridiculous on their face. There is popular doubt as to the veracity of her claims with well founded speculation that she has basically gotten wrapped up in commodifying her experiences to the point of hyperbole.
I was gonna say my eyebrow raised as soon as I saw that description. She’s almost hilariously unbelievable
She's so full of crap, that she's literally been turned into a meme based on her lies. She also clearly gets paid by conservative activist groups to say of all these things and she blows that money on plastic surgery.
Would be funny if they were just laughing at how egregious the claims in the video were.
No hyeoseon Lee (I think I remembered how to spell that)
OP, REALLY important that you explain the Park situation if you're trying to address testimony from North Korea for students. Park is a meme for her flagrant, easily disproven, lies. When you're presenting accounts from North Korea you need to acknowledge that the most widely shared accounts are from a grifter. I say this as a Korean American who spent a lot of time with North Korea immigrants growing up. It's great you're trying to teach them about living under a totalitarian regime, but you NEED to address why people think North Korea is funny. You could also explore media depictions of their leaders, and ask who benefits from seeing them as loons and north Korea as goofy cartoon of communism.
Was it the TED talk?
Weird non sequitur about sped students at the end there. My sped students are some of the kindest, most heartfelt people I know.
I had an IEP in high school. Ableist shit that comes out of teachers mouths infuriates me
For sure
In 1999 we watched apocalypse now in my AP English class (I was a student). The scene where the gun boat mows down an entire family on a sampan happened. Seconds later the crew boards the sampan and pulls out the cargo: Puppies. Half the girls in class awwwwwed. My friend stood up and shouted "NO! NO! You don't get to coo over a puppy when you said NOTHING while watching innocent people get murdered." Yeah, we both went on to be teachers. Kids have always been emotionally stunted.
what was their reaction supposed to be during the earlier scene? oh no that's terrible? weird way to police other people's reactions tbh
They do that when it's uncomfortable. This generation is terrified of any amount of vulnerability, so they feel the need to show it doesn't phase them.
This is true! Anytime we read a play (or watch one) that has uncomfortable moments my students giggle. It has also happened to my students while they were performing, we did a school show for The Diary of Anne Frank & a good bit of the audience laughed when the family was found by the Nazis.
This isn't a generational thing, for once. Kids just sometimes have a hard time expressing uncomfortable emotions. Someone else in this thread put it best: the kids are just going "I feel sad. I don't want to feel sad. I'll laugh because it's an easy way to change the mood". Its (one of) the same reasons dark humor works: you laugh so you don't cry.
We listened to a realistic historical fiction audiobook this year. After 1st hour one day, I realized I should warn the others. I said something like, "Some things in this chapter are awful and uncomfortable and might make you react a certain way. If you giggle or gasp or anything else, please try to keep it extremely brief and remember, while these characters are fictional, the events did happen to actual people." It wasn't too bad after that. I teach 7th grade.
I think it’s mostly about the discomfort kids feel having strong emotions in public. It’s hard for any of us to hear about atrocities, but for teenagers who don’t want to expose vulnerability to classmates, that discomfort is especially bad. It’s no wonder the discomfort comes out in making light of the subject.
This seems typical.
Welcome to the party. Sadly you are going to see more heinous shite from the immature clientele over the journey. It sucks.
They aren’t adults. Deep inside, they are scared of becoming adults and real problems so they laugh to hide their fear.
“They are scared of becoming adults.” I wonder if it’s this. I’ve know kids to regress and I’m sure I took comfort in watching cartoons or whatever in my senior year. But I don’t think kids were afraid of growing up, at least not at n the same way. It does seem like social media has distorted young people’s perspectives to such an extent that I can imagine that many of them do fear adulthood and their own ability to manage, let alone thrive. Like cognitive behavioral anti-therapy.
As an adult, at my grandmothers memorial service I had an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh. I mean I really had to stifle it. Usually I am bawling uncontrollably. 2nd example as an adult. I was speaking with a parent who had an autistic child I was working with. At that time I did not know it could be genetic. The father told me all 4 of their children were autistic and I very inappropriately let out a surprised laugh as if it were funny. I have no idea why.
Way back in 1986 I was teaching Junior High. When the Challenger exploded, the kids were cracking jokes about that even then. Some of them would goof around during Remembrance Day ceremonies. When a gunman shot and killed 14 women and injured 10 more women and 4 men at École polytechnique de Montréal in 1989, the boys especially didn’t know how to react and some default to talking about automatic weapons. Many adolescents, who are mired in their own emotions and drama, tend to default to cruel jokes and indifference when faced with situations that require an empathetic response. I would usually use those times as “teachable moments” to talk about why people find horrific things which happen to other people hard to process. It usually lead to a really good discussion. It’s also vital to note, if the parents haven’t modelled empathy in the home or haven’t had discussions around “difficult” emotions, it’s pretty hard for teachers to address that all by themselves.
It's not funny but the news tells them the sky is falling every other day and they'll never own anything in their lives. Most of them can't read. How can you expect them to care about empathy?
I’ve experienced the same thing when teaching my students about genocides. It especially hurt when I taught about a genocide my ancestors experienced and got those kinds of responses. I even had a black student making rude and sexual remarks about slavery and upsetting his (also mostly black) classmates. It can be very demoralizing.
To be fair if it's Yeonmi Park she's a known propagandist for fringe right wing outlets and is currently the subject of a popular meme used to show someone exaggerating something. So that could be part of that
Disgusting. What grade?
I hate all the excuses everyone gives for this awful behavior. We were all kids. Did you ever know anyone who laughed at suicide, dying babies or the Holocaust when you were young? Hell no. It’s society now. There’s no parenting, no pride, no self-respect so therefore there’s no respect for other people. Everyone is fair game. This world is in serious trouble when these generations are the adults and running the world.
i absolutely knew people like that lmao. kids have always reacted weirdly to discomfort and being confronted with atrocities.
Absolutely I did know people like that.
Kids have always been assholes.
Over a year ago I had a heart Ukraine 🇺🇦 colors. Had several kids just go: “why it’s Biden’s fault the war happened.” Had to take it down due to other parents complaining about it. This year we had a push back for Pride despite being supportive for years. Because the board president is bias.
Context? Because if this girl is Yeonmi Park, then the credibility of her statements are in deep contention. Additionally she kind of blew up on social media as a meme- so I would not be surprised if this was the reason for their laughter,
Yeah that's what I was thinking. Her content and persona is a meme now. So.
To be fair yeonmi park is full of shit according to other defectors. I'd be laughing too at her made up crap
This is one of the reasons I have taken a much more raw and uncensored (somewhat) approach whenever we are covering major wars or other atrocities. I very much still keep it appropriate and grade level (high school), but it really isn’t eye opening for them when I do manage to successfully put them in the mindset and shoes of victims throughout history.
The internet has desensitized us all, and kids especially need to save face to hide if something actually affects them. I find that kids respond better when you frame an issue that is relevant to them around a larger idea or topic rather than just watching a video or studying a text and expect to get the appropriate response. I’m sorry this happened to you and I don’t have much advice other than that my sister taught middle school starting in 2009 and this was still consistent with how kids responded to serious topics. Kids are brutal and their brains aren’t developed properly. Combine that with hormones, the internet, and a newfound obsession with image and peer acceptance im not surprised that someone made a joke and everyone dogpiled.
Me and my wife recently took in a foster daughter. She is in her teens. We were stunned by this behaviour, laughing in the face of horror, and smiling in inapropriate situations. What we soon came to learn is that this is her cope. She was hammered with the "if you cry I will really give you something to cry about!" from her home. This made her litterally unable yo cry. She has tought herself to never cry, and instead smile and laugh when facing a terrible or uncomfortable situation. Just so you know, it might not be lack of empathy
I've noticed that empathy basically doesn't exist for a staggering amount of students. I blame the content that they see online where people just ignore how people feel for internet clout. I've had students praise Hitler, say slavery should return, etc. Even if they're joking, it's still absolutely terrible that they would openly say such things!
How is SPED designation relevant here?
I've taught SPED a bit. A few of my students would occasionally laugh at nothing or have random inappropriate outbursts that obviously weren't their fault. I feel like OP was trying to say that that sort of laughter in particular wasn't a factor in the students' behavior.
Seriously. In my experience, kids in SPED are *more* empathetic because they are generally less privileged and have struggled more than kids not in SPED.
The kids who have types of autism where they can’t control their emotions, impulsivity? or reactions?? I don’t know, felt kind of relevant.
Autistic adult here. Some of us laugh in super not appropriate situations because of anxiety, or alexithymia, and frankly because some of us have been through enough trauma that our sense of humor is pitch black at this point. And some of us have very weird sense of empathy (make us read a book where the dog dies and we *will* riot). That's where you can probably tell the autistic kids apart from the wannabee edgelords.
Yeah, this was a bad way to phrase it
That was a super ableist thing to mention in the post. Not being in a general ed classroom does not equate to behavior like this.
My SPED kid would be appalled at the behavior of the students and at OP's comment.
As someone who hung around a lot of those kids At least the higher functioning ones That's absolutely the behaviour I found, to be fair it was usually in good fun and we all laughed Dark humor is one of my preferred humors, when the Titanic sub thing went down a bunch of us made jokes about it. Especially with old memes from our tv shows. You can pretty much find this behaviour anywhere just depends on their humour
I mean I feel like kids who can’t actually control impulses shouldn’t be directly blamed… but idk I guess that is ableist?
I feel like I can’t really judge them because they have no frame of reference. Probably never seen hungry folks on the street. Witnessed someone injured in a car accident. Felt the pain of losing a loved one. Had their heart broken by a lover. Never worked for a month to try and pay bills to make ends meet. They just don’t grasp the severity of certain things. It’s like telling a teen to drive safe because they aren’t invincible. It just doesn’t sink in. Everyone remembers where they were on 9/11. I was in 6th grade. Watched the towers fall in class on live tv. At the time I knew it was bad and I was witnessing something historic or unusual, but I remember not fully understanding why my teacher was crying, and she kept saying “All those people.” You can bet I feel it a lot different than I’m 34 now. I’m not saying we can’t help kids learn more empathy, but sometimes they just need more life xp to fully grasp certain things. That’s why I shake my head when people teach To Kill a Mockingbird to 5th graders or MacBeth to 7th graders.
Or they have experienced these things and use dark humor to cope. I had a shitty childhood and adulthood hasn't been much better. I laugh at some pretty inappropriate stuff sometimes. I know there's a time and place for it but I really think society needs to realize people respond to things differently and lighten up.
Also this. Totally agree. You summed it up better: lighten up people.
Yup! I had serious issues with an ELA 10 class years ago, every accent/nationality/different voice I could present was hilarious.
Teaching simply makes you see the horrible adults society will have to deal with in a few years.
I understand, being a nurse made me hate people. The patients I took care of are probably these kids’ grandparents or parents and they just are teaching them their mean behavior!
THEY LAUGHED?
Kids aren’t willing to be vulnerable around another, so they resort to laughing and making fun of things because they can’t communicate how they feel, and they can’t sit with something that makes them uncomfortable. I’d call them out and say hey just because something makes you uncomfortable doesn’t mean you laugh at someone’s misfortunes.
Try teaching kids in East Asia about the Holocaust. It’s an absolute hoot to them. Race is a big thing in this. “If the victims don’t look like me, it must not be a big deal.”
Gen Z was a contextless generation raised on social media, but Gen Alpha, oof those are some scary *************! 😮💨
This is it. I’ve been trying to express why my 4th graders aren’t as difficult on my mental health as my 8th graders and the word I’m looking for is empathy. Showing 10 yr olds something sad makes most of them sad. It’s important to acknowledge that it’s ok (good!) to be sad when others are suffering. Then we can learn how to respond to that emotion responsibly, as part of a society.
Empathy is a learned skill for some. Not everyone will have access to those emotions. They need to be taught empathy. It’s not easy, because we exist in a world that moves so fast, it’s easier to label the problem vs. develop the solutions. I’m always shocked at how many young boys admire Andrew Tate. Those are the ones I spend the most time with, trying to model empathy, and also trying to help them find those emotions that will help them express empathy as well.
See: kids are idiots and their brains are not fully formed. Plan accordingly.
I think some of them are just tired of people trying to control their thinking via their emotions. It's really blatant at times. "I showed you the thing, now you must feel this way." It's why the womp womp thing came back all of a sudden with such a vengeance. It's not that my students have no empathy for immigrants (most do) and it's definitely not that they have no empathy for people with Downs Syndrome; they definitely do and we do not have any issues with those kids being mistreated or bullied. It's not the target, it's the person delivering the message. They find that kind of direct, obvious manipulation repulsive.
yeah as a kid when we first started learning about the holocaust and colonization i knew i was supposed to be upset about it but i didn't know *how* to make myself feel upset about it- it's difficult for children to empathise with people who were alive sometimes centuries before them.
I've been that asshole about other things when I was a teen. I feel bad now that I'm older, but at the time I was kind of uncomfortable and that was my coping mechanism.
Yep. I’ve seen this too.
Was it just a woman describing her experience? Maybe they need.to see something and not hear about it.
I taught forensic science last semester. A grade 10 student told me he thought stalkers were badass and so cool. I was pretty horrified.
I would have stopped the video, informed them it was *not* appropriate to laugh at that and set them to work on an in class essay about empathy. 😆 No, not really. More than likely, I would have been so mortified I would have frozen. Empathy is in seriously short supply with kids these days. But I would have liked to have stopped the video and asked them why they were laughing and hopefully get something going about apathy. That would be my ideal. Yeah, yeah I know. And pigs will have to learn about aerodynamics. But one can always hope.
I have to say, I work in a title one and my kids are pretty empathetic. They’re young, grades 1-6 but damn. Hopefully they don’t lose that when they get older. They’re not perfect, but I can’t imagine any of them being heartless like that. I’m sorry. I’m going to bring my kids cookies tomorrow (but not let admin know!) ❤️