“Respect yourself and others will respect you.”

Steve Fouts 00:07
Hey everybody! Steve and Dan Fouts here. We are teaching different with Confucius with a quote about respect, “Respect yourself and others will respect you.”

The notion of respect is something that students evolve into an understanding of the older they get. Respect is built on admiration. It’s when we look at someone and say we want to be like them or we think that what they’ve achieved is something desirable. We look to them as a capable person. It’s a very positive sense, this idea of respect. This quote is talking about respect internally as well. We can respect other people, but we can also admire ourselves and decide whether or not we did a good or a bad job and how that plays into whether or not others are going to respect us. I really like this quote.  What claim do you see Confucius making here?

Dan Fouts: 01:16 – Claim

He’s putting a lot of responsibility on the person who wants respect and is essentially saying you have to respect yourself first before others will respect you. The actions and the attitude starts with the person who wants the respect. It’s an interesting way to think about it. If you don’t think highly of yourself and aren’t confident, then it’s going to be hard for other people to respect you, because you’re not emanating anything that’s worthy of respect.

Steve Fouts 01:57
I think a good story you could ask the students to share would be when they felt they achieved respect from another person and what it took to do that? How meaningful was it to accomplish that? You could also go with the negative, did you ever feel disrespected? How did that feel? How do you determine whether or not you respect other people?

Dan Fouts 02:28
I’m going with that idea. Ask them to talk about an accomplishment they had where at the end they felt other people looked at them differently; that they were respected now but not before the accomplishment. That would be a really positive conversation.

Steve Fouts 02:49
No question. You could even ask them how their behavior changed after they felt respected.

Dan Fouts 02:55
Right.

Steve Fouts 02:56
Were they able to do things easier? It’s really good to get the students to share their experience with respect. But, let’s push back and come up with a counterclaim against this quote. What do you think?

Dan Fouts: 03:12 – Counterclaim

Another way to look at this quote is even if you feel good about yourself, other people still may not respect you. I’m thinking of people who brag about their accomplishments. You might feel great that you did something, but other people might respect you less out of jealousy, or something else.

Steve Fouts 03:41
Exactly. One thing I would add to that, as far as how people perceive others and whether or not others can gain their respect, is thinking about how your students and how young people are when they’re growing up. Putting yourself out there and being able to take on an opponent, for instance, in some type of conflict is a way to earn respect from people. People are not looking at you and respecting you just because you feel good about yourself. They respect you when you show them that you’re better than they are at something, or they’re better than you at something and they respect you now because you were a worthy opponent. I think that that’s another way of thinking of respect that would call into question this quote. That’s how some students think. You could ask the students to share a story of when they felt like they earned someone’s respect based on what they did, not on how they felt about themselves.

Dan Fouts 04:59
What action did they take that generated the respect?

Steve Fouts: 05:07 – Essential Question

Very interesting. Well, I hope you enjoyed Confucius and his quote on respect. I think it’s a really thought provoking quote and conducive to a conversation.

Let’s wrap it up with an essential question. What’s the best way to earn respect? This is going to bring out the real deal from the students. They’re going to be thinking about how much respect they have for themselves and how meaningful that is to them, or whether they really need other people in order to get respect. Is it their accomplishments, more than the way they feel about themselves, that will earn them respect? This could be a really interesting reflective essay or something that you can come back to with a bigger question.

Dan Fouts 05:53
I think this question will get them to think deeply about the extent to which they control respect. How much is out of their control. We often tell them to be

confident and happy and then you’ll be respected. This will make them question that in an appropriate way.

Steve Fouts 06:21
They’re building self-awareness with this quote.

Dan Fouts 06:23
Yes, I’m going to say that.

Steve Fouts 06:24
We hope you enjoyed this conversation.  Be  sure you check out our Conversation Library to discover more conversations and resources to help you have these conversations with your students. We’re glad you were here and we hope to see you soon.

Dan Fouts 07:08
Alright, take care.