The market. The market changed. Obedient, nose-to-the-grindstone, rote workers are no longer necessary. The only chance to make good money and have a decent standard of living lies in developing a very strong personality that does not require outside discipline.
Our children either learn to self-regulate and self-discipline, or they’ll be guinea pigs for cruel experiments.
Clarissa's Blog 
As someone who works in education, I can see why parents would want children who stand out and aren’t obedient because of the market. On the other hand, if my brother and I were willfully disobedient towards teachers or other adults, our parents would have beat us stupid. I get that children ought not to be mindless drones, but they ought to respect adults. I’ve had preschoolers tell me to fuck off and older kids say I’m not a real teacher or that their parents can sue the school, there has to be a middle ground between being a mindless robot and telling a teacher to fuck off
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The middle ground is that self-regulation Miss Clarissa wrote of: courtesy. A young man last week told me “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hobbit, I’m not going to do that.” Then he didn’t.
It was in response to a reasonable general restriction that had turned into an unreasonable law, based on too many high-time preference people. He wasn’t not having any. He has come a long way from the boy who couldn’t hold his ground without lashing out.
I’m proud of him.
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That’s one reason. Another way it’s behaving more and more like a market is that students and their parents increasingly think of themselves as clients receiving a service. And the customer is always right. The consequences follow: relaxing of academic standards, persistent grade inflation, etc.
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My mother was a teacher.
Whether she sided with the teacher or not depended *entirely* on her read of the teacher.
-ethyl
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I think it’s likely coming from several different factors, but I think the top four are probably these.
First, our culture has been muddied. Generally speaking if you have one overarching culture that the teachers, students, and parents are all from, they tend to have the same point of view.
This has in my opinion been watered down over the last 60 years by the flooding of the world into not just America, but any white nation. Toss in communist thought that slipped into the field of edu in the 1920s, and you have a disconnect between all three groups.
Second is the decay in morals and standards. For the longest time America or major chunks of it were raised to be polite, even when killing or robbing someone you should be courteous. Now granted that wasn’t everywhere, but it was the standard from the robber barons in the 20s, to the former slaves just off the plantations.
Tattoos, cursing, foul language, swearing, disruption, etc. were all frowned upon. It happened, but in most of society, there was an attempt to clamp down on it. So if for instance a kid mouthed off to his teacher, the teacher might use a paddle. Then when the kid gets home his dad was likely to back the teacher up and do the same. Because society attempted to clamp down on that sort of stuff.
With the decay in morals, standards, etc. All the stuff that was being clamped down on is rising to the top once more. Politeness is out, manners are gone, cursing and cussing are back, and tattoos are prevalent. There is no more modesty, and decay and rot have set in.
Third is responsibility. Previously the responsibility was on the parents to raise a child. They were taught this when they were young, and were raised to be responsible. Again like before this was mostly the case. Outliers do happen.
At some point the government forcibly took over education. It was no longer a choice. They stripped the responsibility from the parents and essentially stated it is our responsibility.
Over the last hundred plus years people have forgotten that it was their responsibility to teach their kids. After all why should they, its been the government’s responsibility for the last four or five generations. After all they demanded it and if you refused to jail you went. At this point I suspect a sizable chunk of the country think that way.
Lastly is the modern age. The younger generations have gone through school, and found the teachers to be lacking of character, lacking or morals, lacking of spine, and general failures. Again not all, but as a whole the field of education should be broken down and rebuilt. Preferably with control given back to the States.
After going through that, the younger generations are most certainly not going to take the side of teachers, outside the better ones. The ones that are actually doing their jobs.
No I think this will continue to get worse and worse as time progresses, until either the field of education completely breaks down, or is reformed.
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All that, plus: we have systematically eliminated the escape hatches for bright kids in the public school system, ensuring that they are mostly shackled by demoralizing situations where *they are smarter than their teachers* and not given the freedom or resource access to progress at a pace that would keep them engaged. So by and large they check out of education: may still do well grade-wise, but 12 years of internalizing “there’s no benefit to putting in any effort” does not lead to good longterm outcomes.
-ethyl
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“Our children either learn to self-regulate and self-discipline, or they’ll be guinea pigs for cruel experiments.”
Well, Kid, cruel experiments did occur. They involved female, and increasingly feminist, teachers abusing naturally rowdy boys in attempts to change their normal behavior into the notably more general acquiescent girls. What the hell do we think the abusive drugging of young boys into quiet little robots was?
Back in a darker ignorant era, not only were there regular recesses, but there were regular physical education classes. And notably, there were obviously sound disciplinary reasons why the teachers of later grades of primary school teachers were men — the children reached puberty. Sorry to be…well, your term sciency ;-D
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