Richard Vernon : Carl, I’ve been teaching for 22 years. And each year, these kids get more and more arrogant.
Carl : Aw, bullshit, man. Come on, Vern. The kids haven’t changed. You have. You took a teaching position because you thought it’d be fun, right? Thought you could have summer vacations off. And then you found out it was actually work. That really bummed you out.
The Breakfast Club
When people aren’t complaining about kids being ‘groomed’ by ‘woke’ teachers, they complain about ‘woke’ kids critiquing movies that glorified substance abuse and non consensual sex. I guess the latest definition of ‘woke’ means being less susceptible to actual grooming or rape. A lot of those movies bothered me back then, too, and people got mad despite their own criticisms of Hollywood. Maybe they make exceptions for their own failings. “Different times”. Spare me. The pain and consequences are the same throughout history. When adults mock children for respecting boundaries and consent and demanding the same in return…well, it’s once again clear the ‘war on woke’ has nothing to do with protecting children.
These people sound like the worst thing about kids is they don’t make easy targets anymore – except for mass shooters. Maybe vilifying kids alleviates the guilt of normalizing school shootings as the price of freedom. I’ve worked in education in different states for years, and I still remember my own childhood. Kids haven’t gotten any worse. Challenges eb and flow, and vary by individual. When I taught full time I had more problem parents than problem students, and they were still the exception, not the rule. It only takes one to become a headache for everyone. Supposedly one of the strengths of ADHD is identifying patterns. It’s rare I encounter something new. Same metaphorical poo, different decade. Some of my stories set in the past could just as easily take place in the present with different pop culture references. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Take school lunches. Bad food is one of the oldest tropes in the books. The only difference between the rectangle pizza I ate and the rectangle pizza my kids eat is theirs is whole grain cardboard and mine was white. Trust me. I had it once for the nostalgia. No two schools or districts are alike, but there are some common factors. I wish I could remember the name of a documentary about the frozen food industry and its influence on school lunches. It’s also weird (predictable) how many of the same people who opposed removing vending machines from schools complain about obesity now. They give corporations access to hormonal teens lacking impulse control, shame them for doing just what child development experts (many of whom work in research and development for corporations) know they will, and then act surprised they grow up self medicating with sugar and caffeine. Technically sugar is not a drug, but caffeine is. It’s just so normalized people can sell it to minors. And then yell at them for drinking Starbucks instead of buying a house. (Something something avocado toast, blue hair, sheeple.)
There’s a misconception kids don’t play outside anymore – maybe because the same people saying kids never play outside anymore call the cops when they do. Goodness knows I’d be less lax if a certain busy body still lived in our neighborhood. We do make them wear helmets on their bikes because drivers are bad and first responders don’t like scraping brains off the pavement. As for discipline, spanking – which still happens in many homes (including those of school shooters) – isn’t discipline. It’s lazy and ineffective, and demonstrates a lack of discipline. I don’t feel particularly effective yelling either. While I tried to avoid the Richard Vernans of the world, I didn’t respect them or want to become them with their bulging eyes and flaring nostrils. Ridiculous. Alas, even adults get overstimulated and make mistakes. The key is to apologize and do better, not make excuses. You can’t teach kids how to regulate their emotions if you can’t even regulate your own. Discipline takes work.
While social media and the accessibility of deadly weapons have added new complications, the core problems remain more or less the same. Speaking of social media, it’s going out of favor with kids these days. Yes, even TikTok. “Old people” spoil new social media platforms faster than the industry can release them. And nobody has poorer media literacy skills than people who claim to distrust the media yet believe every BS story they see online or twenty-four hour “news” networks as long as it confirms their biases and plays to their darkest fears no matter how inane or irrational. Those networks only air an hour or two of real news. The rest is filler designed to generate revenue keeping people riled up. While they brand themselves as infotainment, they are neither informative nor are they entertaining. Discuss.
As an aside, Alice Cooper inadvertently validated the Satanic panic of the 80s. I thought it was just political and religious fear mongering, but I guess he did sell his soul to the devil, or maybe he’s forgotten what it’s like to be the target of a culture war. I don’t know any parents, teachers, or doctors telling kids to get sex change operations, but some parents and doctors elect surgery for babies identified as intersex at birth or for physical anomalies identified later in childhood. Children with gender dysphoria or conditions like endometriosis, precocious puberty, and certain cancers may receive puberty blockers. The goal is letting kids be kids while treating sometimes life-threatening conditions. Meanwhile, there’s the occasional adult who thinks children become fair game if they “look” mature for their age. If people stop treating others – especially children – like sexual objects, we wouldn’t have to worry about them feeling uncomfortable in their skin for nonmedical reasons.
Hey – do you know who’s least likely to tolerate sexualizing children?
Children grossed out by old movies.
