The Act of Belittling Others

The Act of Belittling Others

The good thing about my job is I get to lim kopi with many people at various parts of the day. Bad for dieting though. And of course, I get to hear gossips about people whom I may or may not know. This is an afterthought from one of the kopi sessions.

I’ve come across many people, who belittle others through words or behavior. I’m hardly affected usually because I, erm, am too thick skinned lar. ? you want to say me then say me lor, unless you are someone who matters or else it’s just water rolling off my ducky back.

Now, I just wonder, what’s the mentality of someone who makes comments like, “this is so simple, why don’t you understand?!”, followed by the are-you-stupid look? When she’s teaching a class of adults.

A few possibilities:
1. These adults are really slow adults… Which they are not.
2. They are too used to our education of spoon feeding.
3. The teacher can’t teach properly. (Nobody in class understood her at all.)

But no matter what, I believe that, even if the teacher is teaching little children, this shouldn’t even be spoken in the classroom. Granted that it’s simple, but the duty of the teacher is to teach. Or else why be called a teacher??? Ok ok. Lame joke.

Why, even little people have pride. Anyway, at the end of the day, what has this teacher done?
1. She certainly hasn’t succeeded in imparting knowledge.
2. She managed to make everyone feel small and inadequate.
3. She has managed to induce fear in her students that they don’t even dare to voice out their fears and need for help.
4. She’s only alienating her students from herself.

I always believe that people’s behavior reflects their true inner selves. She looks like a very successful person on the surface but truly inside her, she probably has a very low self esteem that has to be boosted up through belittling and humiliating others. It’s a wonder that she’s been teaching (or trying to teach) for 8 years and yet she feels that her students (ex students) are an ungrateful lot. Maybe it’s time to look within herself and examine her own behavior. For the reactions of others is a mirror of one’s actions.

0 thoughts on “The Act of Belittling Others

  1. True. I once had a colleague like that. Made her way up the corporate ladder to get to a managerial role. All the while stepping on toes and pissing ppl off. When she got there, with the added responsibility of grooming junior staff, she treated all her underlings like stepping stones to her promotion, providing absolutely no value to them yet at the same time, expecting them to work for her paycheck. Her presence and team management was so abject, her entire team quit. And the next batch of junior staff followed suit almost a year later!
    Just like us not expecting a walrus to teach SQ stewardesses about grooming, the likes of my ex colleague, and perhaps to a certain extent, the aforementioned teacher, should never be put in a position of authority and instruction to eager minds.
    Learning is the way humanity improves and moves forward and we should not let such imbeciles retard that growth.

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