No gifts or anything like that
PalmIn these days when we can begin to take stock of the first quarter of a century, two stories emerge that, together, illustrate one of the great social changes we have experienced in this time. They have nothing to do with screens, algorithms, or electric cars. They deal with more fundamental things: attitudes, respect, and also a certain sense of coexistence.
On the one hand, two teachers tell me how much they dread private meetings with their students' parents, especially when there's no good news to share. This fear is not a minor feeling. And they feel it because, from time to time, they are subjected to aggression, at least verbal. Theirs are not exceptional or anecdotal cases. They are the tip of an iceberg that many schools know all too well.
On the other hand, a nurse at a public hospital tells me that she receives a sting operation a couple of times a year, sometimes from a patient, sometimes from a family member. If she takes stock, she says that in her hospital there's almost a physical assault, some more serious than others, almost every day. And that she herself receives verbal abuse almost daily. She says she understands the patients' suffering. But the treatment, she says, is anything but reciprocal. "In the PAC (Primary Care Center), it's like my house is being devoured," she says. "Not long ago, there were sheets hung up by healthcare staff demanding an end to the assaults, as if it were an extravagant demand and not an obvious one."
What has happened? More or less in these 25 years—perhaps even a little earlier—teachers and healthcare workers have gone from receiving dozens of gifts, especially at Christmas, to receiving blows. Figuratively and literally. It's gone from one extreme to the other with a worrying ease. And while it's true that there shouldn't be gifts—they often generated inequalities, discomfort, and misunderstandings—what's truly insane is that there are assaults.
There shouldn't be gifts, but there should be respect. And what has happened is that we've gone from an almost venerating respect for professionalism—especially for teachers and healthcare workers, but not only—to a stupid attitude of superiority among non-professionals. A kind of idiotic and violent empowerment, like an exact replica of the stands at football matches or the general tone of some television channels. Now everyone knows more than the teacher, the nurse, the doctor, the architect. Now everyone demands, threatens, boos. Professional judgment is just another opinion, debatable, open to attack, and, if necessary, insultable. If you don't like the diagnosis, the grade, or whatever, there's always the insult or the raised hand, which usually go unpunished. Fortunately, these "anyone" types aren't the majority, but there are plenty of them.
If one success of this quarter-century is having stopped giving gifts to professionals, one of the failures is having normalized bullying, something that as a society should concern us far more than any other past fad. If we don't correct this, the gift we'll be left with is an education system, a healthcare system, and many other areas that are increasingly eroded, more vulnerable, and more exhausted. Then we won't understand why no one wants to take responsibility for being on the other side.
