Dignity: the key to student engagement

Mums, dads and teachers – this one is for you.

Respect and dignity are sometimes conflated, but in this video, Cultures of Dignity founder Rosalind Wiseman argues they are very different.

Dignity, according to Wiseman, is the essential and inextricable worth of a person. Respect is the admiration for someone’s actions, which often involves how they treat others. The rub comes when people in positions of authority and respect (for example, our elders), behave in ways undeserving of that admiration but are seemingly above reprimanding.

“This is actually one of the biggest problems for young people in education,” Wiseman says, adding that when that loss of respect and dignity hits home for students, they tend to disengage from learning.

“If I could change something about education, it would be to have dignity be a bedrock of education and that everyone – the teachers, the parents, the students, the staff, everyone, the administrators – has to be treated with dignity,” she says.

View the original video here.

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