Kid Gets Punished for Calling His Teacher 'Ma'am'
Source – Parents of a fifth grader are concerned after their child was punished for referring to his teacher as “ma’am.”
Teretha Wilson said she noticed something was wrong Tuesday when her 10-year old son Tamarion got off the school bus from North East Carolina Preparatory School.
“I asked him what happened. He said he got in trouble for saying ‘yes ma’am’,” explained Wilson.
Confused by his response, Tamarion pulled out a sheet of paper with the word “ma’am” written on it four times per line on both sides. He says his teacher told him to write the word on the sheet because he kept referring to her as “ma’am” despite her instruction not to. As part of his punishment, Tamarion had to have the paper signed by a parent.
“He had a look on his face of disappointment, shame,” said his father, McArthur Bryant.
Wilson and Bryant said their children were taught to refer to elders as “ma’am” and “sir,” and that Tamarion was not intending to be disrespectful. …
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They added that Tamarion was hospitalized last month for a seizure-related activity, which included memory loss and hallucinations, something the teacher was unaware of.
Welcome to the State of Things: 2018, Tamarion. If you can’t make a lick of sense out of what’s going on, welcome to the club. I’m five times your age and I haven’t got a clue.
First of all, I had this conversation a couple of weeks ago with some people from Virginia at a family wedding. One of them talked about getting dirty looks in Massachusetts for “ma’am”ing some lady in a store. I explained to them nobody north of say, Washington, DC is that polite. and second, how I ma’am no one. Because I expect the same reaction they and my man Tamarion Bryant got. Referring to a woman by the honorific ma’am is meant to show respect, but gets treated like hate speech in 2018. The verbal equivalent of holding a door and letting a woman go in ahead of you, something I also quit doing. It automatically gets taken like you’re calling someone an old lady. So I don’t care if you’ve got a walker with tennis balls on the bottom and you’re standing in your own grave, I’m calling you “miss” or I’m not addressing you at all.
Of course, to a 5th grader, every adult is by definition older. And the way this kid was raised, worthy of respect. But the power of a little kid trying to do the right thing is no match for the 8th-degree black belt ninja skills of an easily offended grown up in this world he had the misfortune to be born into. In the long run, he’ll be better off. I was a full grown adult before I figured out that human being suck and there’s no upside to being nice to them. He found out the easy way. If he was acting out in class and swearing his ass off at this teacher, they’d be bending over backwards to make accommodations for him, give him straight As and graduate him instead of putting him on punishment duties.
Speaking of which, nice choice of punishment. There’s nothing like implanting into a young brain the notion that writing is drudgery and something you only do when your forced to. I’m sure that’ll turn those kids into the next generation of Hemingways and JK Rowlings. Way to go, ma’am.
Granted it’s not the worst thing we’ve read about a teacher today. Not by any stretch. But it reinforces my determination to only say “ma’am” under these circumstances: