The Pepper Spray Video: ChatGPT Solves Cell Phones in the Classroom
If you’re reading this, you’re probably some kind of educator. And that means you’ve probably seen the pepper spray video.
I’m not here to get into all that. I can’t defend the student or the teacher, but neither will I attack either of them. Could the teacher have handled the situation differently? For sure. He seems agitated, and any veteran educator will tell you that once you get mad in the classroom you’ve lost the moral high ground.
But did the teacher deserve to get pepper sprayed? Absolutely not. It’s wild the girl had the spray in the first place, but the thought that she felt okay spraying a teacher in the face is next level wrong. Just like the teacher, she could have handled herself better, gone to get another adult to help deal with her cell phone problem.
Ah, the cell phone problem. Let’s go ahead and pivot to that.
Among the many hot takes I saw in reaction to the video, one in particular got under my skin: “If he had a better relationship with his student, her cell phone wouldn’t become a distraction.” I spent the last couple of days tweeting about the problems with this statement, but I felt like I had more to say. And so, here we are.
Now, to be clear, trying to foster a good relationship with your students is essential for a teacher. Children learn best when they are seen and known; it is worth our time to attend to them as whole people, not merely as vessels to be filled with our knowledge. I have written elsewhere about the importance of classroom community and relationships. I am a believer.
This notion of “relationship,” however, can slide dangerously into the practice of a teacher wanting to be “liked.” Having spent seventeen years and counting in the classroom, I could name a number of “popular” and “well-liked” teachers I have known — teachers who couldn’t manage their classrooms into anything like an educative environment. Students would stay after class to apologize for bad behavior, professing how much they enjoyed the teacher, then get right back up and clown around the next day. Being “liked” is not the same thing as fostering a positive relationship. Ask any parent of a toddler or a teenager.
Also, the idea that a good relationship with a child is going to keep them off TikTok is ignorant at best. Companies spend billions of dollars trying to make their apps as addictive as possible; social media is this generation’s designer drug. It doesn’t matter how much a student feels seen and known by their teacher — that phone can pull them away in an instant for a dopamine hit. A “good relationship” can’t compete with basic brain chemistry.
For days Twitter has gone back and forth about relationships and the role they should have played in the classroom of that poor pepper sprayed teacher. The video is like a version of that crazy dress on Instagram a few years back — different people see different colors and won’t back down in arguing their position.
Of course, most folks know they must accompany a “good relationship” with some kind of structure. Ideally a district or school-wide policy, but I’ve heard from many teachers with an ad-hoc system for checking cell phones in and out. Other teachers choose to rely on consequences. I saw more than one person quote some version of Machiavelli’s dictum: it is better to be feared than to be loved.
This being 2023, I decided to settle the debate by asking ChatGPT. If it can’t solve our problems, then no one can. I asked, “My student won’t put their phone away. What works best — relationship, routine, or consequences?”
Far quicker than I could compose an email to an actual education expert, ChatGPT replied. “Establishing a positive relationship, setting up a consistent routine, and providing appropriate consequences are all important strategies for addressing cell phone use in the classroom. Each of these strategies can work together to create a supportive and effective learning environment.”
Uh-oh. Maybe I should write that email after all. It seems ChatGPT won’t be replacing teachers in the classroom anytime soon.
I decided to try a different tack. “Is it better to be feared or loved?”
I’ll spare you the entire answer. For a few paragraphs, ChatGPT stalls, just spitting back information about Machiavelli. Then it pivots to Aristotle, who apparently believed it is better to be loved than feared. Score one for the “good relationship” teachers, maybe? Maybe not, though — after the Aristotle bit comes a blurb about the failures of tyranny throughout history.
At the end, though, ChatGPT redeems itself, putting up this beautiful sentence: “Ultimately, effective leadership is about building trust and respect, while also being willing to make tough decisions and take appropriate action when necessary.”
Thanks, ChatGPT, but I’ll take it from here.
In other words, teaching is hard. You’ve got to earn the respect of dozens of humans — all generationally quite different from you — while also daily offering them a content and curriculum that might not interest them in the least. And, all the while, they’re holding little drug dispensers in their hands, just itching to get one more hit the moment your back is turned.
Relationship has to be the foundation, but you’re going to need something more. Check their phones in and out if that seems best. Rely on school policy to keep them in backpacks and out of sight, or rule through the fear of immediate consequences — the dreaded parent contact. Whatever works for you. The stakes could not be higher — we’ve got to convince these kids to put down their phones and learn about the world outside of social media. Our future quite literally depends on them.
A word of advice, though. If you find yourself getting angry, just walk away. It’s not worth possibly getting pepper sprayed just to prove a point. By the time you’re that frustrated, you’ve already lost the battle anyways.
