Respect: Earned or Demanded? (AKA: The Computer Science Experience)

Okay so this rant here goes out to my Computer Science teacher, whose name I am not allowing on this blog BTW. So the question here is do people deserve respect just for existing, or should people, regardless of age, have to earn your respect? Now I'm not saying you should disrespect a person until they prove they are deserving of your respect, but rather another idea. This idea is that you start with a good solid level of respect for said person, maybe because they are older than you or a teacher or whatever, and then your respect level for them diminishes slowly thanks to acts said person does.

Here is my example: My CPU Science teacher (hereby dubbed Mr.CPUscience) is a complete jerk. Now I'm not going to leave you there, Mr.CPUscience does a ton of things that one would consider terribly disrespectful. Here is the short-list of acts done by this teacher to me, my class, or other individuals: snapping to keep the class quiet rather than saying "quiet please", telling a student to "shut-up" when asking a valid question, treating everyone like they are stupid, yelling that students are "out-of-control" for not making it to their seat by the bell, yelling at students for making statements about his class(such as "Umm... Mr.CPUscience we don't have this class Friday, will we take the final exam Thursday or on Monday?"), he lies like a carpet, and he lacks any sort of tact. Now this list may not seem especially terrible, but combine that list with the fact that he takes all his programs directly off the web, and the few he doesn't never work, I see no reason to respect him.

Now I know it sounds pretty terrible to flat out say"I have no respect for you", but what happens when that is exactly how you feel? Now I feel as if I deserve more respect than what he gives me, a lot more considering I have straight A's in his class and I helped a lot of people keep theirs too, and it actually hurts that he shows me the bare minimums of respect. Now I've been told "It's the Golden Rule: Treat others the way you would like to be treated", but what happens when that just isn't fulfilling enough? What happens when you feel like he needs to be treated the way he treats others? It really is unfair to just assume that your class and everyone in it will just continuously give you the respect you always say you need, while not respecting them at all.

I know I probably sound like a complete jack-ass at this point, but really this is how I feel. Funnily enough this isn't my least favorite teacher, I just don't care about him anymore, I kinda float through class like a ghost.... Point A to Point B, sit in my desk half-ass a program, and then sit and my computer and write about my complete lack of respect for him. Am I wrong to not respect him if I'm not like violently disrespecting him? I mean he is a teacher, is being a teacher enough to excuse you from your own moral responsibilities? Tell me what you feel...