I understood the assignment immediately. She wanted them to consider their characters as people, not just as roles. She wanted to give the characters depth by making the students aware of details in the characters' lives. And I thought to myself that this wasn't just for this class. These principles apply in every day life.
We all go through life constantly interacting with other people. It is a fact, however, that we do not have the emotional depth or energy to consider the feelings and humanity of every single person we encounter. That would be exhausting. So to a certain extent, those people with whom we are not personally acquainted, who only fill brief roles in our lives, become just furniture.
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I am familiar, through one reading or another, with the concept of different types of respect. There is thin respect. This is the respect we are taught that we owe to people on a daily basis, or in certain roles. This is the respect which we employ when we call teachers Mr. or Ms., or when we hold open the elevator door for a stranger. While some people may be woefully short of this, it is still a large factor in everyday interactions. If someone operates on a daily basis with a high level of thin respect for the people around him or her, we consider this person to be "nice."
But they are still only aware of the people around them as furniture. There is no meaningful interaction.
To reach a deeper level, to get to the point of thick respect, then the individual must become aware of another individual as a person. This is usually achieved through disclosure.
To apply this practically, I'll give you a glimpse into my day as a substitute teacher.
When students see me for the first time, they do not see me. They may observe details of my dress and behavior and arrive at conclusions, but they still do not see me beyond my role as a substitute teacher. For those capable of thin respect, who have been taught by their parents to apply thin respect, this may actually mean that they treat me better than they treat their regular teacher. I am an adult in a position of authority. Others, unfortunately, see only an opportunity to get away with things. In both cases, I am only a piece of furniture in their world.
So I tried an experiment today. While I was reading the instructions for an assignment, a student short on thin respect was talking. I stopped. I walked up to her. I held out my hand. I introduced myself: "Hi. I'm Mr. Houser. And you are?" She said, "I know your name. It's on the board." "Yes," I said. "But I wasn't sure if you realized I am a person, not a television or background music to be ignored or talked over." I smiled as I said this. Disarmingly, I hope. She smiled back. "Sorry," she said. The "sorry" was a sign of thin respect. Progress.
I then explained to the class what I had done, and why. I didn't use the terms thin and thick respect. I tied it to the lesson. Then I told them that the principle could be applied to their monologue characters. I told them the more details they could provide in the characters' lives, the more real the characters became. I told them I could tell them a detail about me, and I would become more real as a person. Then I told them one.
I told them that my father had lost his right hand as a young man in an industrial accident. This grabbed their interest, and at the same time gave us common ground. Most of them had fathers. The fact that I had a father, too, made me more human. They had questions. I answered them. I had subbed in the same class the day before, and had found them to be an outspoken, unfocused bunch, reluctant to get down to work. I had asked them, as a substitute teacher, to work. I received a half-hearted response at best. Some had ignored the assignment entirely.
When I asked them to work again, the response was different. I may have still been a substitute teacher, but I was also a person.
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