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

[7Days]

I don't think I'd send 8 year olds off to work, but definitely have them contribute at home. Chore s, etc. Kids always have but I suppose it's only in the last century that work has become so abstract - I had a rural childhood 30 years ago and the benefits ordinary small tasks like feeding hens were tangible when the family are the eggs.
And there is a visceral sort of satisfaction in doing work and soon after reaping the benefit. We ask kids to learn calculus now to pay the mortgage in 20 years. It's a big ask.

[7Days]

The typos are unusable in my last post ( too lazy haha) hope you get the get the gist

[PickAChew]

It was the same in tough small town schools 25 years ago. It's not a new phenomenon.

[BabySharkAteMyHamster]

Better now ??

There's no bloody jobs. Years ago lower achievers could.fall back on shop work or factory work. Both are hard to come by now. People are supporting families on jobs that years ago kids would do.for pin money for uni. It's.shit out there. My heart breaks for those up and coming kids who are average or below.average. They.must despair.

[ChristmasFluff]

A teacher who doesn't understand how to make it clear when they are quoting another poster? Yeah, probably not the best teacher.

I'm in my 50s, and teens today are ten times more caring for eachother than I and my peers were. That's why they get called snowflakes, isn't it? There's some rulebook somewhere that says they aren't meant to care for their teachers - but some teachers are good enough at their jobs that they earn their respect anyway.

[OhEctoplasmOnIt]

Sounds like you can't control them and they know it.
Cringe at "yuff"

[CurlyhairedAssassin]

How do you explain the difference in attitudes towards education of spoiled kids in leafy suburbs and those who walk 6 miles or more to get to school each day in rural Africa?

Which of those two groups of pupils seriously has it harder?

[7Days]

Teachers may well be very good at teaching. But it's a tough job, when you are dealing with 30 almost adults, if the prevailing atmosphere among the students is hostile, or even undifference.
Let's face it, a lot of the curriculum is boring. Even if you have nothing more pressing to worry about than that spot on your chin and if that guy next class up has ever noticed you.
I was a good kid. Raised well, in a good school, with friends from good families. (Good =/= monied, btw). We still tucked around, because mitochondria is boring as fuck, likewise the industrial revolution, what sort of magician can make the life cycle of the liver fluke more exciting g than Darren from year 5?
Our mother's went grey over our (harmless yet obnoxious) antics. But they loved us and we grew up.
You can't expect st the same indulgence from teachers.

[CurlyhairedAssassin]

I sometimes think the problem is we give our school kids far too much. Hand out stationery and other equipment willy nilly for free daily. The kids don’t value it because they have just been handed it and they don’t connect it with a loss to the school budget. When I was at school we were never given so much as a pen. You bloody well looked after your stuff cos you knew y your parents had spent hard-earned money on it.

Things like prize giving assemblies. you were thrilled to get a certificate. Now, the kids turn their noses up if it doesn’t come with an envelope with a £20 Amazon voucher.

Now teachers buy the pupils presents at Christmas, what happened to it being the other way round?!

There is now gratitude for what they have amongst some kids today.

[CurlyhairedAssassin]

No gratitude

[CurlyhairedAssassin]

7days: there were plenty of kids who were MORE “good” than you, and genuinely interested in the academic work and who would happily have thumped you for disrupting their learning.

[7Days]

I don't doubt that curlyhairedassasin.

The point in making is that we were good, we had no real reason to be disruptive, nor did we mean to be out of any sort of malice. We were just kids more interested in who Jamie is seeing than in oxbow lakes. Our parents would have, and did, kill us for messing about. We were ordinary teenagers, and that's the nature of the beast, and it's not fair to say teachers are no good when one of them, armed with a textbook, is no match for 20 or 30 of even the nicest teens at times. It's expecting superpowers of teachers.

[AmabelleOnabike]

with a pathetic little nickname

That's nasty for the sake of being nasty.

OP I have a teenager who wants to be a teacher. Where we live it is harder to be a primary school teacher than secondary but she does not want to teach secondary because she "knows what it is like in there". She's a good student, involved in lots of extra curricular but says the teachers spend a lot of class time dealing with the mouthy ones who may be bright or have potential but are taking away from the rest of the class. She is in a rural school which has some fab teachers (and some not so fab so same as most I imagine). Definitely there were the mouthy ones in my day but their parents would not have been Up in the management's face if their rebel was told off as they seem to be nowadays.

There is certainly more pressure on young people and I would hate to be a teenager girl in my dd's world but there were more boundaries in mine, we knew we'd hit off a fence if we went too far. I think young people who are finding their way in their world need fences and there aren't enough in today's increasingly permissive society.

[Stripybeachbag]

I agree with the OP. I have worked in schools in 3 different countries for a total of 10 years. The lack of respect of kids in the uk towards teachers is astounding. There is a real hostile them and us attitude amongst the uk kids. They will hunt as packs and go for a teacher if they sense weakness. (Even kids that you know are lovely can try to impress their peers in a way that can surprise a lot of adults.)

However, they are smart and will not go for all teachers. Experience, strictness and sharpness are recognised. But even the most experienced, best teacher will have come across extremely challenging behaviour at some point.

I am generalising. Teenagers have I taught in other countries of course can have bad behaviour. But nowhere on the same constant low-level scale as the UK. BTW I taught in the grammar school in the uk and god the kids could be horrible.

Anyone who doubts the OP or thinks that it is in some a reflection of her teaching abilities, obviously hasn't set foot in a modern school, has their head in the sand or has associations with an extremely rare school that is not typical of the UK.

Back to one of the OP's original points. Students will break things just for the hell of it and take no responsibility.

[SinisterBumFacedCat]

As kids we had to put up with this, as in being looked down on by older generations, mass assumptions being made about our entire generation and the general decline of society based on a few bits of bad behaviour witnessed or an article in the Daily Fail. I haven't forgotten this so when someone of my generation now starts generalising about "the youth of today" like they've had some blinding revelation that confirms everything that was good stopped with their age group, I fucking despair. You are just continuing an age old dialogue. In 20 or 30 years the kids you are complaining about now will be saying more or less exactly what you've just said about those younger than them. This is far from original.

And they do not have it easier. Less career opportunities and jobs with meaningful wages, Zero hours contracts, housing has been unaffordable for years, further education and driving is now out of reach for many. Aristotle.

[DrFoxtrot]

'Yuff'? I've never heard that term, I've heard people say 'yoof', I'm assuming it's along the same lines...

[TotHappy]

The op and others are right. It's a fucking jungle out there. It takes time to get the discipline down, it doesn't come naturally to all of us and that does not mean we aren't good teachers BUT you have no chance if the slt is no good. And in some schools they really aren't. You have no power to make the kids accountable for their actions and they know it.

[Sparklesocks]

Literally every generation has claimed the one that came after them has it easier and are lazier/ungrateful etc.
Nothing groundbreaking here.

[HopeClearwater]

There’s a lot of truth in this thread about the disrespect in schools. I wonder whether it’s because teachers are far more familiar and less remote in their dealings with children now. It’s a double-edged sword. Yes a teacher might now be more approachable, but equally a naive teenager still learning social boundaries might not read that properly.

As a primary school teacher I have to say that the school equipment isn’t valued in the way I’d like it to be, but then we are forced into buying the nastiest, cheapest stuff now - rubbish pencils and rulers from county central supplies - and it’s hardly worth valuing.

Previous posters have picked up on the way society values higher earners and that’s certainly reflected in many people’s view that the person educating (and sometimes disciplining) their children is ‘only’ a teacher who often earns a lot less than they do and is therefore not worthy of respect.

[7Days]

I'm not sure that house prices and working conditions mean much to teens. Maybe they do, a nd maybe I'm not taking a broad enough view.
But,ime, teens think short term. Intellectually of course they know what's going on, but being 25 seems far off,never mind being 45, a fat smoker with a useless partner and a precarious job? It's as likely as becoming a Hollywood star.
Today,tomorrow and next weekend are what s real to young people. Generally speaking of course.

[userblablabla]

Yuff

[TheNavigator]

We have compulsory volunteering in my 6th form now. That's not volunteering

Kids know when teachers care and they respect that. You don't respect the young people you teach and in turn they don't respect you back.
You really are in the wrong job.

[DieAntword]

Every time I’ve volunteered I felt like the place I was volunteering was doing me a charity by letting me not like I was genuinely a valued contributor myself. At least when someone’s paying you you know it must be worth it to them.

[LimboLuna]

I take my hat off to any one teaching these days.
However, there’s no way I’d want to be a teenager now, social media, added exam stress.

[stopitandtidyupp]

The level of ignorance and the armchair pedagogy on this thread is astounding.

The general public don’t realise how bad it is.