Paul A. Trout's Shame On You

In the piece Shame on You by Paul A. Trout, he discusses the value and disrespect involved in shaming and how this has changed our academia values in our current society. In this work, he both discusses how shame has changed the interactions between professor and students and also the backlash if a teacher goes too far in their shaming. To begin with, Trout points out how quickly students are to be enraged by what they feel when shame is directed at them. He discusses how a student came towards him telling how insulted they were when he encouraged the fact by the end of his class his students would become better writers. Instead of taking the remark as a way to channel excitement of the course to keep students interested, they viewed it as an insult insinuating their writing needed to further improvement. I feel Trout was at no fault for his remark or how it made the student feel. The student is at school to learn, they are attending the class to improve themselves. So when

I come from a small town where friendly shaming was normal among students and teachers. Most students were friends or even related to their teachers. So friendly shaming was common. The problem with this was students who did not have that direct relationship with teachers would feel left out or excluded from the group dynamics. Outside of friendly shaming, we have the type used to influence students. Such as calling out students for misbehaving in class or telling them off for poor work ethic. This itself does help create people who need to reflect on their own personal habits. But, students who are publically called out are more than likely to rebel more to create the same shameful atmosphere the teacher placed on them and make the teacher know the same feeling. The best way if at all to ‘shame’ a student is privately and publicly shaming should be reserved for those students who need to be made an example of. Such as a