Life is better today but the ‘Yuff’are unfgrateful

[H2O2hair]

As a teacher I am probably a bit biased but maybe more informed.

The generation of today don’t know hardship. Sometimes for the better as there but sometimes I feel not,it does make kids entitled.

I work in a leafy suburb school.

It’s a battle to get kids to shut up to learn. They eventually do but its a battle.

They flout school rules as you watch them ,such as a one way system.

They don’t bring their ownequipment and break yours. Snap rulers, pens and throw them at each other. Glue , glue sticks to
the wall

Bins don’t exist

They ask me why I wear the same dress every week. Lots of personal commenst.

They try to sit on my seat and log onto the computer and search records.

Many more.

Did we do this as kids? I certainly didn’t . Bet half of parents don’t realise the poor listening skills and behaviour of their children.
AIBU

My high school had numerous teenage pregnancies (with the fathers being men in their mid 20-30s), kids dealing weed during lessons, swearing at teachers and occasionally smoking cigarettes in the classroom. I remember one poor newly qualified teacher left after one year, his classes were so feral. Many teachers kept the class in order though.

I think that kids have it harder now - they're under more pressure to be academic, there's less opportunity or encouragement to pursue the arts, more learning to pass exams rather than to actually learn. Tests and homework in primary schools, the knowledge that once they leave school, university will leave them in crippling debt, sky high housing costs (both rental and owned), etc.

Na na na. And I don't care how you pronounce Na.. I have taught in both - rough as rough can be and super wealthy.

OP is right! In these leafy schools, kids are trained to treat the teachers like less than street sweepers. Comments like 'you have kids - WHY do you work?' Erm, I pay my own way... or 'My mum says cheap shoes like yours are a lot of fun.

A boy went into my pencil case and snapped my rubber into 10 bits the other day. When I caught him and questioned him he smiled and said ' my Dad will buy you 100 rubbers' with a cheeky smile that said something else.

When I worked in the rough school, even the kids with serious problems respected the fact I was a hard working person trying to help them in some way. I'll get back to those kids.

Equally, in our day we didn't have to deal with internet porn, social media bombardment or the belief that failing to pass a DT exam meant a life on the dole.

I'm not saying that these are excuses for poor behaviour, just that it's easy to think we were so much better behaved and had more difficulties. It's swings n roundabouts imo.

School won’t allow.

Someone wrore in my text book when I they werw usiymy classroom with another teacher
‘ black C**k. Then glued my pen holder to the desk.

Ugh!!! My keyboard

When I wasn’t teaching!

They swap keyboard keys too!

We get it. You can't cope. Other jobs are available.

Agree!! That is not solving the teacher shortage though.

It sounds like you’ve made the mistake of assuming that a “good school” will be better in terms of behaviour and respect. Which is a mistake people often make with poor schools, council estates etc. Good areas don’t automatically mean good parenting.

And if you have a shit slt then you have a shit school, regardless of ofsted and exam results, because teenagers will push boundaries because they are teenagers. They just push them in different ways.

I would never want to be a teacher for a week... but that's why I'm not a teacher. I wouldn't choose it as my career in a million years.
Perhaps you're in the wrong job, OP?

navigator are you plopping on other threads being a similar arse? Or are you just a twat to teachers?

would never want to be a teacher for a week... but that's why I'm not a teacher. I wouldn't choose it as my career in a million years.
Perhaps you're in the wrong job, O

Maybe I am. It is sad though as ther s nothing better than sharing the joy if mu subject with a willing pupil. I could do it forever.

We were quoted in briefing the other day.. you can lead a horse to water and you can dunk its head to make it drink. I think that’s sad.

Sorry for my sausage fingers having carpal tunnel treatment which isn’t helping with picking the rubbish off of the floor.

My nana was always getting the ruler for chatting, messing about and “acting the clown”... this was in the 1940s so definitely not new.

And to say the generation of today don’t know hardship - what utter bollocks and really closed minded. Some children will suffer more hardship and personal issues before the age of 16 than others will their whole lives. I’d expect a greater level of empathy and awareness from a teacher than you seem to be showing here.

I honestly believe the big problem with “kids today” (and for several generations prior, mine included) most especially the more privileged ones is the way we split life into the education phase and the work phase and in the education phase what matters is your “potential” and in the work phase your value to others.

So in the education phase you are paradoxically under enormous pressure to become someone valuable because 20+ years of education and leisure are being invested in you and also a completely valueless individual who contributes nothing to society. That is a recipie for fucking anyone up imo, no wonder teenagers act out.

I think kids should start working from the age of 8 - part time, alongside school, with strict rules to prevent economic exploitation, maybe in heavily regulated apprenticeship schemes (far more than current ones). They’d develop self esteem knowing they don’t need to wait till they’re mid 20s to become contributing members of society, they are capable of contributing now at their level, they’d develop work ethic and a practical context for what they learn in the classroom. It would also help alleviate a little bit of the pressure on the standard working age population in terms of funding elderly care.

It's ridiculous to think teenagers can't be unpleasant people, like any other age group.
Add to that peer pressure, immaturity, desire to prove themselves, the ordinary ups and downs of lufe, and the fact they feel like underdogs sticking it to the all powerful teacher, no wonder it can be sh it for teachers who want them to engage with trigonometry or ox bow lakes or whatever.
But op some slack

DieAntword
One's self-worth should NOT be dependent on being a "contributing member of society." That is NOT what life is about. In fact, the pressure to do so is harmful. Do you want to raise a robot or a human being?

What an extraordinarily fucked up philosophy.

Everyone has value as human beings of course but let’s not kid ourselves, to feel like you don’t contribute to society is deeply demoralising and shattering to self esteem.

But not everyone is capable of being a so-called contributing member of society. And I hardly think making 8 year olds work is the solution. In fact, it's ridiculous. When will they have time to be kids?

for forks sake (aka the good place) I really hop the op is not a teacher

I took 10 school trips in the last year involving 150+ kids, 2 abroad. I think I got about 3 thank yous at the end of the trips. Parents are just as bad. My dad used to go and thank the person running the trip before leaving, nowadays parents sit in the car, kids jump off the bus and into the car and if you’re lucky the parent will nod at you as they speed off...

There are plenty of opportunity to contribute to society by doing something useful in school to help the school community as a whole. Many of them can’t be arsed to put the effort in. It’s always the same old kids volunteering on open evening or selling raffle tickets at the school play or offering to be mentors to the younger pupils.

We have compulsory volunteering in my 6th form now. It’s recorded in a log. The laziness amongst some of them is shocking. Trying to get staff to sign off 20 mins of their help as a full hour etc.

OP, I get you. I’m in the leafy suburbs too but our kids’ backgrounds are very mixed. I can forgive the kids whose backgrounds you know to be causing the acting up. What I can’t stand is the behaviour from the kids from well off backgrounds with supportive parents. The kids who are spoiled and lazy and think they dont need to put the work in. The ones who individually are fine but as a group turn rude and nasty. “I’m keeping the cleaner in a job” when you tell them to pick up the half-eaten sandwich they’ve just dropped at their feet and rubbed into the carpet.

It’s not this generation, there have been disrespectful teenagers and shit schools for a long time. And while your school’s kids may not know hardship (as far as you know) many do.

There’s this idea that because overall standards of living have increased and poor people have used iPhones now, that relative poverty, mental illness and stress mustn’t exist. Well back when rationing was around, and siblings shared beds - not just rooms, would you have told a poor child living in a shithole flat how grateful medieval peasants would be for their standard of living and that they don’t know hardship?

Since I'm only 22 I'm only recently out of the 'yuff' stage.

As far as I know there have always been arsehole kids. My dad tells stories about kids smoking in class and throwing the cigarette butts into teachers bags, and kids having proper fist fights resulting in broken noses, whereas modern version when I was at school was nicking someone's phone and smashing it on purpose.

Yes kids in every generation have experienced hardship.

I'm from a middle class, high income family and had the perfect life on the outside, good grades, friends etc. But I was crippled with anxiety, depression, self-harming and had an eating disorder. Teachers never had a clue.