Biff, you funny witster, you!!!

Oh, and while you're visiting, do you remember what culture I was referring to? I was waiting politely for that update so that I'd know what on earth I was talking about. Thanks.

I actually have to update the last lesson on a new thread, in the event most of those who posted on this one do not check back, like us, Biff!

Elissa,

I hadn't been back to this thread until lately.

You said:

“It's a cultural issue for sure: she has been raised to be rude."

You did not say that the child lacked culture. You said it was a cultural issue.
It sounded loaded to me.

But I probably took it that way because shortly after I was born my parents sat
down at the kitchen table and decided that they would raise me to be rude.

They discussed my capabilities and decided that they had two choices. One was
that I could be rude and the other was that I could be a very bitter person.
They chose rude and then carefully cultivated that quality in me.

Biff

And thank goodness they did! I can't imagine the the bitter version of you would be quite so entertaining.

Biff, I'm still way in the dark - I genuinely have no idea what you could be referring to, so.... Although maybe you use the term 'cultural' in a different way than I do? Well, obviously, but I'm not sure what you mean by it, or that you understand what I mean by it.

A parenting *decision* to raise rude children doesn't always work out so well, either, in my experience, whereas many kinds of parenting can certainly hinder children developing social skills. When a child is raised where rudeness to others is tolerated the child then has none of the normal control mechanisms which we associated with maturity.

Now no one pretend that it's not really hard to raise emotionally mature children, but at the very least children should be taught how to behave in a civil manner.

When parents don't create the conditions under which children can develop manners and maturity they are, by default, raising rude children.

In any case, you were clearly thinking of something else, goodness knows what.

My take on what Biff Baxter was saying was that "children/adolescents from cultures who have a deep respect for teachers" implies that there are cultures that do not have deep respect for teachers. Instead of saying that rudeness is bred from lack of culture, the statement implies that it's the culture that breeds children who have no respect for teachers.

So I take it that Biff was poking fun, saying that his parents decided to raise a rude child because he "belongs to a culture that likes rudeness" - kind of an exaggeration to the extreme of a "culture that do not have deep respect for teachers".

At least that's how I thought of it as a joke and I laughed.

You can be perfectly polite and not come from a culture which has a reverence for education!

It is probably my lack of education that prevented me from knowing that.

Biff

Platitudinal bloviations?