You may not have heard about 6 7, and if not, your life is not the worse for it. Also, you probably don't have contact with young humans.
6 7 is just the latest nonsense meatworld meme. You don't need to rush to figure it out because now that Wikipedia has a page about it, Miriam Webster has an entry, and the Wall Street Journal just ran an explainer (calling it "this fall's most obnoxious classmate"), all of which means it's nearly played out.
But in the meantime, it is one more test of teachers' patience (particularly on the elementary level).
These tests are always there (skibidi toilet, anyone?) because young humans love them some nonsense. And 6 7 is relatively harmless-- not violent or sexual or intended to offend. As nonsense goes, it's better than average. But this brand of nonsense represents a fundamental challenge for teachers.
Some teachers are not meeting the challenge well, with nonsense behavior being met with nonsense rules. But it's not great for a classroom to model principles like "I don't like that, and I have the power here, so I'm just going to forbid it." That includes silly ideas like "I'm going to fine you fifteen cents every time you say that stupid thing, because I'm fed up." It is tempting, as a teacher, to just get out your big stick; after all, this is just nonsense, and not important talk.
As we live through a time marked by the muscle flexing of a wanna-be authoritarian regime, teachers need to ask themselves what form of governance they want to model in their classroom, and I sure hope they arrive at "non-authoritarian" as the answer.
I am not (as any of my former students would tell you) a fan of classroom anarchy. You can be an authority without being an authoritarian. Teachers are hired to be the responsible adult in a room filled with non-adults. That can mean many different things, but what it should not mean that the classroom is governed by the teacher's personal preferences or whims rather than being governed by actual rules and principles.
I've seen classrooms run by a teacher's personal edict. I still remember the shock of hearing teacher say, speaking of home room elections for 7th grade student council representatives, "They picked the wrong kid, so I made them elect the right one." What a lesson for students about how elections work.
If we're going to grow adults who understand the Rule of Law rather than the Rule of Me, then classrooms and schools have to model it.
That means, for instance, the administrators need to follow the actual rulebook for the district rather than a modified version in which different people get different consequences depending on who they are.
And classroom teachers need to set and follow rules based on something other than their mood or the newest irritant of the day. Students need to soak in a subtext other than "People who have power get to make other people do what the powerful wants."
This was always true, but it's especially true now. You want to push back against authoritarian tyranny? What would be better than helping to raise a generation of humans who understand in their bones that there are other, better ways to be.
So when 6 7 gets on your last nerve, or the next bit of nonsense reveals itself, reach for some reaction other than "I am so sick of this and I have the power to shut this noise down, so I'm going to use all the power at my disposal to stomp it out." Because we know right now what that looks like when applied in the grown up world on a national stage. More than ever, classrooms need to be built to look like the country in which we want to live. If you want No Kings in America, be careful about crowning yourself in your classroom.
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