No offense, but...

It never ceases to amuse me when someone says something completely offensive, but starts with the words ‘No offense, but...’

It happened to me recently when I was having lunch with friends (more correctly; a friend and an acquaintance). The topic of discussion was one of my favourite ‘rant worthy’ subjects: The quality of teachers in public schools. We agreed that the majority of teachers in the public school system had become apathetic. We went on to tell various stories of our experiences with uninterested teachers and the effect their attitudes had on the children.

I then brought up that I was thinking about becoming a teacher myself. I mentioned that because of my accounting degree, I’d only have to do 1.5 years full time study to be fully qualified to teach business studies to high school students.

My acquaintance’s response was to scoff "No offense, but I think that’s the reason why teachers are so crap these days. It’s because people like you can go in there and do just half a degree”.

Not only was her comment extremely rude, it was also completely ignorant. The only reason I can do ‘half a degree’ is because I’ve already covered the knowledge based subjects for my teaching area in the degree I already have. It would be completely redundant for me to do a full length degree and do the exact same subjects all over again. Naturally, if I wanted to teach something completely different like English or Science, I would have to do the full length degree.  

My acquaintance then went on to say that she was a successful business owner without having a degree, and in her opinion most people who went to university don’t know anything anyway. So on one hand, the quality of teachers has declined because some of them have only done half a degree; and on the other hand, people who go to university don’t know anything. Not really a consistent argument.

Her attempt at putting me down for no apparent reason other than the fact that I am attempting to better myself was both nasty and unnecessary. Furthermore, starting a sentence with ‘no offense but...’ does not excuse the stupidity and bitchiness of the comments that follow.

No offense, but you’re a cunt.