If the new and enlightened method of child rearing is so successful and superior to the older ways, why is bullying and intolerance apparently increasing?

I don’t think there actually is more bullying and vandalism going on today, it’s just that we are much more aware of it. There was plenty of it going on when I was in school, I know that.

@augustlan Even so: if the new ways are better, why aren’t the cases decreasing? The basic question, “We addressed the problem, why isn’t it going away,” remains.

There is no way of knowing if it is decreasing, as studies regarding bullying are a recent phenomenon. I know that there was a hell of a lot of violence when I was in middle/high school. I remember fistfights being a weekly event, with the occasional weapon being pulled. I also remember being violently abused in the halls, and know many who were brutalized in locker rooms. For what it’s worth, my middle-school-aged daughters are absolutely shocked at the stories I tell them about my schools.

What is this “new and enlightened method of parenting” to which you refer? I am also not sure which problem we addressed or how it was addressed.

There are some parents who hit their kids who are crappy parents and some who have never laid a hand on their kids who are crappy parents. Therefore there are going to be some well behaved kids and some kids who act like jerks. My guess is that there are just as many crappy parents and good parents now as there have ever been.

I agree with @augustlan, there have always been bullies, just as there has always been mental illness, spousal abuse, addiction, etc., it is just no longer as easily swept under the rug as it once was.

Seriously?! This is so not a new issue.

My grandfather had a knife pulled on him on his walk to Kindergarten, in 1917.

He was bullied at school because he was a poor Italian kid that lived in a rented house.

This was back in the day when kids were whipped with leather straps by nuns in school.

I once asked my kids, when they were in high school a few years back, whether gay kids got picked on in their school. They looked at me like I had two heads.

Gay kids were certainly picked on in my high school.

I know this is strictly anecdotal, but it reassured me greatly.

Being a high school student, I can say that bullying and vandalism goes on because no one stops them. My school which is fairly prgressive (has consellors, mediators, anti-harrasment teams etc), still has alot of cases of ureported bullying. Adults will turn a blind eye until the situation is really serious. If students don’t take the intiative to go them they can’t really help.

For over year a boy in my class was bullied (verbally, physically and through exclusion) and no one did anything. Personally, at the time I had no idea the situation was that bad. Now, we are seniors the bullies have realised their cruelty and have begun making amends. The victim found a new group of friends and seems to doing really well. But not once, during the time, did anyone take a definite action. Including myself and other members of the class. It’s apalling when I think back on it.

I guess, my point is, that although we have this ‘new age’ parenting and teaching methods. It has yet to be enforced to its maximum potential. We are caught at halfway. We no longer punish achild like we used to, but we are not taking the strong action of the ‘new age’ process which is needed to make a resolution/difference.

@Nullo We are more prosperous than ever yet poverty is on the rise. Explain that!

I have to agree with @augustlan about awareness. I mean, we have the same stuff going on that was going on when I was a kid a few decades ago. What we didn’t have back then were Facebook, Twitter, 24/7 news outlets, and other forms of instantly disseminating information. We are more aware of our world than we were, yet it’s only now that people are realizing how fucked up a place it is.

Also note that isn’t a result of parents being “softer”, because even the older folks who complain about kids today are pretty nasty themselves. Intolerance isn’t just increasing amongst kids. Take a look at the Republican race right now; last I checked, they were all well into adulthood.

As for bullying, adults go about things a bit differently… usually. I still see many people my age and older doing things that could qualify as “bullying”.

And for those that think “Give’em a smack and they will straighten out”, my father was raised that way. I have the physical scars to show for it too. I almost have to wonder if it isn’t misbehavior of the youth that prompts the “Smack ‘em!” crowd, but rather jealousy that kids today don’t shed blood at the hands of their parents like they did when they were growing up.

I disagree with the premise of your question. I do not know what this ‘new method’ is that you’re describing, nor am I ever convinced by talks of some random ‘good old days’ – if you mean like the 50s or whatever, kids were more bullied if not downright assaulted but no one gave a crap ‘cause they were segregated and homogenous. We are finally paying attention these days to the bullying that was always there and are trying to do something about it.

Even if we were to accept the assumption that there was a new and enlightened method of child rearing, what would justify the assumption that the children being raised this way are the ones doing the bullying? Couldn’t it be that the bullies are the one’s being raised the “old way”?

I’m not accepting any of these assumptions; I’m just pointing out that the conclusion doesn’t follow even if we do accept them.

I think it’s the age old ” these damn kids of today” mantra. It’s been going on since Platos generation. lol Yep, I was bullied in Jr. High waaay back in 1971–72. Some pretty mean girls at the school I attended. Poor little Marcia Brady was scewed. lol

Your premise seems faulty. I would like to see the proof that bullying is on the rise. As above @SavoirFaire states that the bullies might be the very ones that have been hit as a teaching method.

I think it was more prevalent in large cities when I was growing up. I know when my kids started school in a small town, it really wasn’t an issue till we moved to a bigger city. Now it does seem to be just about anywhere. Some of it may be that there are simply more ways to bully, like cyber bullying. But I don’t think it has so much to do with new child rearing methods that are not so new. It has more to do with absent parents. I’m not talking about single family homes either. I’m talking about children who come home to an empty home because both parents are working and care more about affording what the luxuries in life and not being a drag, that their children are unsupervised most of the day. Bullying comes from anger issues. That can usually be traced back to parents are absent in their lives. Not because they have to be, but because they want other things more than their kids. They lavish gifts on them and think it is cool to let them have their space.
The bullies I knew growing up mostly seem to fit the profile of having to raise themselves or they had parents that spoiled them and made them feel entitled. The second one led to bullying because outside of their home they realized they were not the center of the earth and they were not going to put up with that. After all, their parents have been doing as they wished all along, so they try to force others to get with the program.

This is because of the blasted rock music that has infected everyone. Society officially went downhill in the 60’s when the most influencial rock artists have started spreading their gospel of hate, bullying, occult practises, rebellion(this is the main one), hatred for Christians, Jews, lawlessness. This list goes on and on.

If music was regulated by the state this would have not happened. Well anyway if you want my help this is what you do if you want to escape this society’s influence

-If your a student, ask your parents to homeschool you
-If your a parent, remove your kids from the school system and homeschool
-Boycott rock music and their artists
-Be a Christian(may or may not work for some people)
-Never use the radio
-Never go to any concerts(better safe than sorry)
-Go to the countryside(optional)
-Never talk to strangers
-Always escort your kids when you go outside
-Do not let your kids go to parties unless the host bans drugs, alcohol and rock music
-Get a gun to defend yourself in lawless times(Do not do this if your in a country/state that bans guns)

This is my advice

While I do agree with the general sentiment of the responses of this thread, I also think one major difference not really raised in the discussion yet (edit: @Pandora did bring this up) is that dual income family has become the de facto standard replacement from the traditional father supporting a nuclear family. I think 30 years of “trickle down” economics plays a big role in why this is the case. Having a full time stay home father or mother is really looked upon as a luxury of the top few percent in the general culture these days.

I’m not advocating the position that you can’t raise well-adjusted children with both parents working, nor am I advocating that having one parent home full time to raise the children will be a guarantee that the child will be well behaved. I do think on the whole, this trend has to have a negative impact when considering the overall data between generations.

I remember my father telling me when he moved into the city in 1940, the second day he was there a bunch of much bigger kids were waiting outside his house for him. They asked him if he was Catholic or Protestant. He said Catholic. They said, ok, they wouldn’t kick his ass, but he had to do their homework until he was big enough to fight the Protestants with them.

Bullying is not on the rise.

@dimitri685

You scare me.

@Coloma He scared me for a moment too. I am not the quickest to grasp sarcasm in written form.

Bullying is natural. Humans will do whatever bad they believe they can get away with…anything. It doesn’t make it right but that’s the deal. I have heard that developmentally we are the same inside as we were when we were in high school. Generalizing here but when you think about it, it sure explains a lot.

Funny how many people try to play coy on this question. It seems pretty obvious to me (and by all means correct me if I’m wrong @rooeytoo) that by “old ways” the OP means spanking. By “new ways” I’m pretty sure the OP means “whatever method you use instead of spanking”.

Of course there are implications that go beyond this simple point.. but it’s making me a little nauseous inside that a few posters are trying to skirt around things.

The fact is, CPS involvement and changes in spanking laws have occurred over the last few years in the united states. Parents who spank their kids now have to worry that their liberal neighbor will call CPS on them. (This can, potentially, be an oppressive environment for parents who aren’t “forward thinking” liberals….but that’s beside the point) [disclaimer included for the dim-witted: CPS is not a bad thing. It’s a great thing. Please don’t think I’m implying that CPS is a communistic regime hell bent on world domination or anything.. just slow your roll turbo..]

Things have changed… and yet… they’ve stayed the same. There are still bullies in schools. There will always be bullies in schools. I don’t believe we can manifest an answer on this question without filling in the gaps of the premise of this question.

To play DA: All this change has occurred, less people are spanking their kids because “laws have changed”, and yet bullies still remain. From this information I can only gather that (as mentioned above) there are probably bad parents out there. These bad parents are not confined to any race, creed, or religion. They were probably raised by the “new method” the “old method” and everything in between. So the problem (as I see it) lies much deeper than specific parenting methods.

The problem is that evil exists. An evil father beats his son (not spanks… beats.. for you dyslexic people out there). His son, being young, cannot properly process what is happening. The son interprets events incorrectly. He thinks that he is at fault, or he becomes insurmountably depressed, or angry. The chain continues to the next son and the next until one of them is born, grows up and learns how to break the chain.

I still maintain that through adversity is born strength. Bullies typically have strong bodies or personalities. They have strength that is pointed in the wrong direction, but they have strength. The occasional bully (regardless of the reason why he is a bully) can be an evil that we can benefit from. Like politicians or lawyers.

Anyway, I digress, dig a trench and digress some more. Perhaps you can now see a little bit how my mind wanders from topic to topic. My bad. It’s also very late and I’m still recovering from a wicked hangover

@6rant6 – Are you ever going to finish? It’s been 10 hours :D

Cheers everyone for your responses. I do agree that there is much more reporting of all happenings today than there was in the past. But I am not convinced that means the amount of bullying has remained static and is not increasing.

For the record by enlightened parenting I was referring to those who decry the methods used in the past, including but not restricted to, corporal punishment. The ones who claim today’s methods are so much superior.

It is always interesting and educational to hear diverse views.

And to all the young and snide who refer to questions such as this as the good old days syndrome, this is a different world than the one I grew up in. I don’t know if it is better or worse anymore than my parents or plato did when they commented on the differences they saw. As you all age and see the changes you too will inevitably notice and comment. The truth is there are many things that have improved over the years but there are also many that have changed for the worse, at least imho. In a few years the next generation of enlightened ones will emerge and tell you that your methods were abysmal and you created all sorts of monsters and social misfits by your implementation of such ignorance. And then you will be talking about the good old days….......

Like many above have stated: this question is full of faulty premises.

I won’t go over it all because many already have. However, even if we were to grant you that kids/people today are so much worse than the kids/people of the good ol’ days, you have major problem…

Raising your kids with corporal punishment and “good ol’ days parenting” apparently results in kids who will grow up believing that corporal punishment is not the way to go, which will result in the “enlightened parenting” you claim exists. Therefore, corporal punishment old-school incredible parenting => non-corporal punishment horseshit parenting => the end of society.

Ouch. Makes that good ol’ hit your kid parenting seem a bit irresponsible, huh?

@digitalimpression I don’t think people were being coy. I know I certainly wasn’t. It just seems to me that corporal punishment has not gone away, and I have no evidence that it is the kids being raised without it who are the bullies. I have no evidence that it is the kids being raised with it who are the bullies either, of course, but that’s why I asked. I rather think that bullies will exist regardless and that bullying was not what the so-called “enlightened parenting” was supposed to solve. This makes asking why it hasn’t eliminated bullying a little bit like asking why eating peanuts doesn’t make you less thirsty: peanuts are a way of addressing hunger, not thirst.

I have not read all replies, but have to ask if the question is based on feelings and guesses or statistics.

This is nothing new. We evolve and had these same battles as I was a child and our parents were children. I still see respect and disrespect. There is vandalism and violence and there was in the past.
It may appear on the blush that there is more now because we have so many means of communication and media may be focusing on more bad than good.

Try to take out the media factor and look only in your own family and circle. Is it still true?

I can choose to be respectful and center and focus my family and surroundings in the positive.

What do you see in your own world? If you don’t like what you see, what are you doing to make it better?

Kids were bullied when I was growing up, it’s true. But it was different.

No one in my generation had to choose a gang to keep them safe from being beat up. No one in my generation ever got jumped in. Few got shot. In the town where I grew up, there were a lot of moms at home when school was over, so if I made it home I was safe.

Things have changed.

@6rant6 Maybe they’ve changed, but these things might be cyclical. My grandfather had to be part of a “gang” to be safe, but he didn’t get to choose. Instead of the Bloods and the Crips, it was the Micks and the Wops. People got jumped, people got knifed, and this was true despite the presence of mothers at home. Thus was life in poverty.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

@SavoirFaire Kids did not get shot in your grandfather’s day. None of those kids had to kill anyone to get into a gang. As a rule, fighting was done one on one, not six on one.

The petty bullying that has always gone on looks much the same, but the top end stuff is much more lethal, and kids are much quicker to escalate to guns.

@6rant6 Only because guns are more available these days. Imagine how The Crusades would have gone if assault rifles and tanks were invented a few centuries earlier. Same problems, same people, just new, more effective ways to do what you wanted to do anyways.
Technology changes lots of things, and one thing it changes is our ability to express our inner asshole.

@6rant6 You’ll notice I mentioned being knifed in place of being shot. One reason is, as @jerv has already noted, the relative availability of guns versus knives. The other reason is that I completely agree with you that kids didn’t get shot in my grandfather’s day (at least not regularly). I doubt that was a great comfort to those who were knifed to death, however, or to their parents.

You are also quite right that gang membership was just a matter of ethnic origin and did not require initiation by murder, though it is quite incorrect to think that these groups never ganged up on anyone or fought in groups. They certainly did. People will fight just as hard to be not on the bottom as they will to be on top. So even if the manifestation is different, it seems to me that the phenomenon is the same.

Ultimately, though, I’m not quite sure what gang violence has to do with the everyday bullying about which the question asks. You separate them in your latest response, and you pretty much admit that your original post discussed two different issues as if they were one, but I wonder if you think the gang phenomenon still has some relevance to the issues we’re discussing here (outside of technological change). I’d be interested to hear what connections you might think exist.

Kids did not get shot in your grandfather’s day. Perhaps you would be interested in the facts as per this wikipedia article

@6rant6 do you mind if I ask how old you are? I am 46 and I will tell you what, there were absolutely gangs around when I was a kid and there were absolutely other kids who joined gangs in order to be protected. I lived in a town that was and continues to be ranked as one of the safest in the US and there were plenty of bullies and gang activity even in my safe little enclave. There was plenty of bullying in my high school, I was bullied as were many of my friends. My ex-husband, who will be 50 this year was bullied mercilessly throughout elementary, junior high, and high school.

@digitalimpression I for one am not being coy. I think your statement to that effect is an attempt at being cute and in yet another thread to advance your wrong-headed belief that the only way to raise a decent kid is by spanking them on the regular. As you notice in this and the other thread, there are a great number of jellies who aren’t buying what you are trying to sell. Smack your kid, have at it, but don’t try to convince me that I am doing something wrong as a parent because I make the choice not to hit my kids.

I am simply not buying the argument that things were so much better “back in the day” and if we all just began having our kids pick their switch then proceeding to use it to beat the hell out of them, we can put an end to bullying and gangs.

Okay then let’s put it this way, if indeed the old style parenting was so ill advised and the newer methods so much more effective. Then why is the world not a better place to be than it was 50 years ago? Ask anyone in their late 60’s if they could walk the streets safely at night when they were kids, if their parents locked the doors of their house, if they left their car unlocked with the keys in it? You don’t need statistics compiled by a government agency to access the veracity of that one! It isn’t the people who were raised in the old fashioned ways who are committing crimes such as these, it is the ones who were raised in the newer methods.

@rooeytoo my father was born in 1937 and grew up in a suburb about 15 minutes from downtown Los Angeles. When he was in high school he had access to every illegal drug available then and could get any of them in a hot second. He drag raced up and down Ventura Blvd, skipped school, and he and his friends got in plenty of trouble. I am fairly certain the keys were not left in the car, the doors to the house were locked and there was trouble to be had walking alone at night. The safety of one’s neighborhood is more than likely a function of geography rather than decade.

@rooeytoo I walk the streets safely at night, and haven’t locked my car in years. This in a major metropolitan area as of 2012. Point?

There IS a difference today—there’s almost no respite.

Like I said on another thread—bullying today can be 24/7. When I was a kid, when there were problems at school, home was my safe place and escape from whoever was giving me trouble at school. I could go to the mall with friends and be safe there, I could go to Grandma’s and not have to deal with my bully. That’s not true today—technology ensures that bullying can follow the kid literally 24/7… to Grandma’s, to the mall, to anywhere there’s cell-phone coverage.

The intent to bully is not new – it’s probably as old as humanity, but the methods are new.

@jerv – You must live in a different world than I do then. Where I live and have lived is no longer a Leave it to Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet existence and nobody leaves cars unlocked. I recently asked a question regarding signs on all parking meters saying “Lock it or Lose it.” That sign also is indicative of the change. What’s more the newspaper recently advised folks not to hang their keys in an obvious place inside their house because kids are breaking into houses, picking up the keys and then stealing the cars out of the driveway. A 93 year old woman with a walker was just bashed and robbed by 2 teen aged males. She was on the way to buy the morning paper at 5 am as she had been doing for the last 50 years. Now she is afraid to leave her house and afraid to be in it alone.

I have not stated that this is the result of the change in attitude towards responsible parenting, I asked that given the fact that most claim the newer methods of child rearing is so much superior why is this sort of activity if not increasing, still happening. And that question still stands.

@SuperMouse – I don’t know about Los Angeles in 1937 but I know about my hometown in 1950 and I know how my brother lives in it now. He wouldn’t dream of leaving the keys in his car even in his locked garage. It is a totally different existence. And the people who are making it different and unsafe now are not those born in 1937 or 46.

Agreed. Baby boomers steal from younger generations through tax policy.~

Actual statistics on crime, showing a tremendous decrease from the early 1990’s on

@rooeytoo Where the hell do you live? The Seattle area is far from the 1950s ideals that you put forth, but it appears you live in a neighborhood full of crackhouses.

Also, why do you think that parenting has any effect one way or the other, especially since many of the people doing this stuff are old enough to predate “kinder, gentler” parenting?

FYI, my stepfather is around your age, and he and his brothers used to fight with .22 rimfire rifles and do all sorts of stuff that you seem to coplain about happening now. If you want to talk about a totally different existence, don’t compare the past to the present; compare your little fantasy world to the one that the rest of humanity have lived in since before you were a wet spot on the back seat of your dad’s car. The people who are making it unsafe now are the children and grandchildren of the people who were making it unsafe when you were young, and in turn they are the descendants of those who made teh world unsafe before them.

There were no “better days”.

Cope.

Deal.

Accept it.

Let go of your delusions and embrace reality.

A) People tend to view the past with rose-colored glasses, and long for the “good ol’ days”, which never really existed.

B) There have always been, and will always be, people who suck. A certain percentage of people are going to be awful, whatever way they are raised. We just have way more people now. The percentage is likely the same, but in sheer numbers, there are going to be more bad people out there.

@rooeytoo My town used to be more like wherever @jerv is, with regards to locking. One may walk about freely at night, but his car is no longer safe. The criminals radiate out from St. Louis, though, rather than degrading generationally. The more wrongdoing someone commits, the less likely he is to care about it.

I am more amazed each time someone responds. I live in Australia Jerv but the news is the same everywhere. The thing with the old lady was somewhere here about a week ago, it was on the morning news. Each day there is a similar incident or 3. Am I the only one who listens to the news?

One of the reasons stated for the increase in childhood obesity is that parents are afraid to let their kids play outdoors or walk to school. Hasn’t anyone read that??? So you all don’t lock your cars or houses and walk around at midnight but it’s not safe to let your kid out the door.

Now my original question was if kids are so much nicer and less violent and well behaved these days why is the world not reflecting this improvement but that question is moot at this point because no one seems to agree that the world is a different place than it was 50 years ago. I thought Australia was a wonderful place to be but maybe I should move back to the USA, it sounds so much safer.

@rooeytoo – There is no correlation between the amount of crime and and amount of crime coverage on the news. If you are concerned about some kind of new crime wave, you’ll probably be fascinated to study the actual data on crime. That would be a good start. Then, it might help to research some of the causes of crime, and how fluctuations in the economy can influence things like this.

You’re providing anecdotal evidence, and to be honest it completely contradicts my anecdotal evidence. That’s the great thing about taking the “i just feel that crime is increasing/decreasing” stuff. There are statistics out there. Just to provide you an example of my anecdotal evidence: When I was a kid, I didn’t go a week without getting in at least one fist fight. A local boy used to throw lit matches at me and my friends. A girl in my neighborhood was raped right behind our neighborhood in a path to our school (by an older kid). I used to have to get in fights to stand up for a kid who was legally blind. Kids used to punch him in the stomach and just torture him. A kid on my street got in trouble for brandishing a pistol at another kid. Note: I was born in 1971 and grew up in a very “safe” middle-class suburb in Massachusetts.

Things are improving for most people. Ask any African American or homosexual if they would prefer to meet up with all of those “nice” kids back in the day who were brought up with corporal punishment. I suspect they would not be so cool with going to back to some imaginary “good old days”.

@rooeytoo: “no one seems to agree that the world is a different place than it was 50 years ago”
No, I do agree that it’s different. Different in a much better way.

@rooeytoo: ” I thought Australia was a wonderful place to be but maybe I should move back to the USA, it sounds so much safer”

Come on. It’s really not dangerous here. Nobody I know locks their houses or cars. The kids I know are nice kids.

Also, I don’t want to repeat myself, so I’ll just link to my first response. Your theory on all of this seems to imply that good old corporal punishment parenting leads to kids who will grow up believing that this is not the way to go, which will end up breaking civilization as we know it.

I guess one of the good things about having come of age in pure misery is that I don’t pine away for the Good Old Days.

I think there are some places where crime is worse now, some where it is the same, and some where it is better. My brother-in-law grew up in Brooklyn in the late 70’s early 80’s. That boy did not go near Times Square unless he was looking for trouble. When we visited Manhattan in 2006, my sister and I walked around Times Square after midnight and felt 100% safe and comfortable. Just like parenting there are variances, there are always going to be safer cities and less safe cities, and where they are is going to change with the times and of course economic forces.

As for bullying, I think @linguaphile makes a great point. Where there might not be more bullies around now, there are more ways to bully. Bullying is brought right into our homes via the internet and for a child being harassed, there truly can be no escape.

@rooeytoo I don’t quite see how this post constitutes a restatement that gets you out of having to back up your claims. Not all of today’s children are raised with what you refer to as the “new ways.” Some are, of course, but we need some evidence that those are the children committing the acts to which you refer before any legitimate conclusions can be drawn. I’m also not sure that everyone thinks the so-called “old style” was ill-advised. Someone can think that something new is better without thinking that the older version is bad. Indeed, I suspect that the “new style” is basically a slightly altered version of the “old style.”

Finally, I do think your vision of the past is too rosy and your vision of the present too dark. I know plenty of people who leave their doors unlocked in my little town. Not me, but I’m originally from New York. Also, I haven’t read that the supposed dangers of playing outside or walking to school are responsible for the current obesity epidemic. When I did a Google search for the claim, I could only find two results claiming that, neither of which were news sources and both of which seemed to be just extemporizing. What I do know is that the story of my family is a one in which we escaped violence and poverty by inches. It is a story of progress, not of decline.

I always thought I was reasonably sane and non paranoid, but you all have convinced me I am a raving nut case. Okay I will cease locking my car and house, I will stop thinking that I have heard about heinous crimes on tv, (and I rarely watch tv) because according to statistics crime is decreasing. Dogs are not being abandoned and put to sleep at an abysmal rate. The sign on parking meters all over NQ that says lock it or lose it is a joke and the world in general is a better and safer place now and people are happier (and less drug and alcohol free) than years ago. There is no global warming, people are not overweight and everyone has a job, works hard and there is no welfare. Let’s see, have I forgotten anything? Oh yeah, most importantly, all children raised with the non violent, no “hitting” will grow up to be lovely law abiding citizens.

The funny part is those who are accusing me of painting a past much rosier than it actually was are painting a present that is pretty delusionally rosy imho. So I assume I will not see you complaining about any of these things in future questions.

@rooeytoo Everyone views life from their perspective. It’s not right or wrong, just different. If you feel accused, maybe look into why you feel that way.

@rooeytoo My point is/has been merely that my experiences and observations are different from yours. Your mileage may vary and all that.

I really think that the long term trend is for people being nicer. It was not that long ago that people thought that slavery was perfectly acceptable. Terms like racist or homophobia would have been incomprehensible. Long term homicide rates are declining. Homicide rates in a typical hunter/gatherer society are an order of magnitude higher than in industrialized countries.

@rooeytoo – Calm down. Nobody is accusing you of being insane. This is completely normal. In college, we spent a semester studying crime rates and public hysteria and the correlation between the two. In particular, we looked at violent crime. Polls during these times of perceived upticks in crime showed that large parts of the population thought that things had recently taken a bad turn concerning crime, but the crime data just didn’t support that claim. It’s normal. Corporate media has some major problems. One of them could easily be the ability to catch on to “sexy” topics and create a national hysteria (I’ll stop there).

But to get back to your experience. I’m sure your experience and perspective is completely legit. However, social scientists and others tend to look at such questions within a larger society. So, your home town might experience a demographic shift over a short period of time, which may result in an experience that is different from when you grew up. That is natural. But to use that experience to assert that the variables and conditions at play apply to other towns, states, country, or countries is another thing altogether. That’s not even considering your proposed explanation for the mere assertion.

So, no – you’re not crazy. And what you are feeling is probably completely natural. However, it’s not my experience, and I have yet to see data that supports your assertion that today’s “bullying and intolerance is increasing.” Like I said above, come to the states and ask a homosexual, woman, African American, or any other minority if they would prefer to deal with the properly-raised people of the good old days. I don’t think you’ll get the same response. And sure, there is a long way to go before we can say that we’ve beat intolerance and racism and not burst out laughing. However, the good old days were only good for certain people, and for even them it’s debatable as to how good it really was.

And I will just throw this out there in case you feel like commenting or responding: I have mentioned that your argument/claims seem to imply that our current crappy decline into anarchy and destruction is a result of good, old-fashioned parenting of the corporal punishment type. So, like I said, even I were to grant you your incorrect premise, the conclusion would be that we need to find a better way to raise our kids than it was done in the good old days so we don’t repeat the mistakes we have made.

Every generation is the same. You have the same types of parenting, either good, bad, or indifferent which crank out the same types of kids. I don’t think any particular kind of discipline is better than an other (and I do mean ‘discipline”. Beating a child is not discipline it’s abuse.) I think the success of a any type of discipline depends on how it’s used and if it’s used fairly and consistently. The good parents of today who find discipline methods other than spankings, would have been the same good parents of yesterday who DID spank, and their kids would have turned out the same in either situation because they’re good parents.

I have been following this thread, @rooeytoo. I have to say, I agree with you. When you look at the stats that show crimes rates dropping, what is the time period you are looking at?

@rooeytoo While I have said that I think your vision of the past is too rosy and your vision of the present is too dark, this does not mean that I think the present is actually rosy and the past is actually dark. I think there were bad things in the past and that there are bad things now. When I mentioned people not locking their doors, it was to counter a claim you made that was factually mistaken, not to recommend the behavior. When I mentioned the progress my family has made over time, it was to point out that sometimes things get better even while other things get worse, not to suggest that things only get better and never worse.

I think similar things can be said of the other posts here, which suggests to me that you are not actually trying to understand what anyone here has written and no longer actually defending whatever point you were originally trying to make. I’m sorry you are frustrated that we didn’t all just say whatever it is you were dying to hear, but I think you might get better results if you tried backing up your claims instead of ranting about things that weren’t actually said.

I am calm and I really didn’t think I was ranting, but thanks for the advice.

If you look back at my original question, the only response that really answers that is the one that says there really isn’t any more bullying, it is simply being reported with more frequency.

I think the ranting is coming from the rest of you proclaiming that the world is a wonderful place, you don’t lock your doors, although you are not advising others to adopt this practice.

If I had asked what is wrong with the government or American
you would all be posting how terrible the economy is, so many helpless homeless jobless people and you really need someone to pay for your health care.

So I can only assume that the people are wonderful, kind and non violent, it is the people (?) who run the country who are the real bad guys and bullies.

Again I say, truly in a non ranting tenor, cheers for your answers, they pretty much reflect what is happening to the world and what I expected to hear. Although as we all know, the opinions of flutherites, even the majority of flutherites is not really representative of the real world majority.

@rooeytoo Again, you are overgeneralizing. That is why you are encountering so much resistance. Note, for instance, that I have not proclaimed the world to be a wonderful place. I do lock my doors, as I quite explicitly noted, even though I know people who do not. And if you had asked what is wrong with the government, I would not have said anything about the economy being terrible (that’s a problem, but not something wrong with the government), about homeless or jobless people (which is again a problem, but not something wrong with the government), or health care (the government has health care). This is another way in which you are being careless: problems with the government are not the same as problems in the country or problems that the government should solve or to which it contributes. If you’re just going to write words at random, it will look like a rant even if you are being calm. So while I accept your claim that you are not ranting, I still don’t think you are doing a very good job of communicating.

We’ve had a decrease since in crime since the early 1990s in the US. @Imadethisupwithnoforethought posted a link showing this. How about today’s crime rates in the US compared to the 1960s or the 1950s or 1940s? Or even the 1930s?

http://www.jrsa.org/programs/Historical.pdf

Have a look at Australia’s numbers:

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4524A092E30E4486CA2569DE00256331

@bkcunningham But that decrease may be because of a number of reasons, not just “new and improved” parenting.

@Dutchess_III good point. In his book, Freakonomics Levitt puts forth a compelling argument that the legalization of abortion via Rowe vs. Wade is a major contributed to this drop. The argument is that offspring who would typically be aborted tend to come from backgrounds that would make them much more likely to become criminals. Essentially there was an entire generation of criminals who were never born to commit crime as they would have reached peak crime-comiting age.

There are also many in law enforcement who would argue that the decrease in crime is due to different methods of assembling statistics, rather than actual decreases. All depends on which set of statistics (and who paid for them to be assembled) you choose to believe.

@rooeytoo in the book I referenced, he takes that data into account, as well as several other factors (e.g. longer sentences meaning fewer criminals on the street). Levitt estimates that about 40% of the reduction is the result of criminals being aborted before they were ever born.

@Dutchess_III, there hasn’t been a decrease when you go back to the stats from the 50s and 60s. There has been a decrease since the early-1990s. It is all relative to what you are comparing and the point you want to make with the stats.

“Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.” Evan Esar

I was originally going to talk about how the concept of bullying has changed in the last decade for educators, but many people are already talking about that, so I’m taking a different look at it.

If there is a chance that bullying is on the rise, it may not be due to parenting. Schools are becoming more and more over crowded these days. Many school districts are closing down and consolidating buildings. I’ve subbed in buildings that were designed for a school population of 400 children, and there were over 900 children in the building.

I When buildings are designed, they aren’t just planning for the space to cram certain amount of people. They design it for a certain amount of people to be comfortable. This includes things like how wide to make the halls so people can easily walk down them without bumping into each other. What sort of floor tiles can absorb sound best but are still affordable? How many toilets do you need? What’s the best layout for the school cafeteria so that people have plenty of space and don’t run into each other?

I have taught and subbed in many schools across the country and I can say from my experience that schools that are over crowded have a much more hostile atmosphere than schools that are within their recommended capacity. It’s bad enough that when I do sub, I check the stats of the school online and I won’t sub in an overcrowded school.

What is overcrowded? Is it the number of students per teacher? When I started school there were over 35 kids with one teacher in one room all day long. It was that way for 8 years, give or take one here and there. There was one bully in the class. He would ambush you in the alley on the way home from school. His threat was that he would pull your pants down. He was a fat kid though and could easily be outrun. When I told my mom how he tried to chase me, she said to take a different route home. Wonder what would happen today if the same scenario existed. when I told that story on another question, I was informed my mom was a terrible mother for not protecting me…...and here I thought she was teaching me to fend for myself. Different style of parenting???

Different Perspective

It’s not the number of students per teacher. I am talking about the number of people in a building vs how many people the building is built for. Classroom size isn’t really important as people once thought it was.

I’m talking about hallways you can’t walk down without getting an elbow rammed down your throat because they weren’t meant to handle the amount of traffic going down them. I’m talking about toilets that are constantly broken and overflowing because they weren’t meant to have as much crap flushed down them as they do on a daily basis. I’m talking about the fact that the kids may not be able to use the toilet during their class changes because there aren’t enough toilets to handle the kids. I’m talking about lunch rooms where the kids are forbidden to speak because the noise from the sound of so many kids is unbearable for the administrators. I am talking about teachers who are burnt out because they work there and are tired of the noise and the crowds and tired of the kids who are even more pissed off than they are about being there.

If you want to blame moms and dads for everything that go bad go ahead. Maybe moms and dads caused the 1970s prison riots that broke out all over the country when the prisons were grossly overcrowded and the morale of the prison staff was at an all time low.

Correlation is not causation. There are a number of things that have changed in the last 30 years. We could blame it on cell phones or the Internet or lowering the voting age to 18.

And you have to remember that I’m mostly humoring you when I agree with you that bullying is on the rise. I’ve been a teacher. I’ve been a sub. I’ve been a school librarian and I’ve been a student. I’ve been in a heck of a lot of schools on both sides of the teacher’s desk for a long time.

I have also read a lot of professional journals, taken classes for continuing education credits, read trade publication articles and mass market pop psychology books on the history and psychology of school bullying. I might have a slightly different take on things than someone who was just a kid at one school a very long time ago.

But I guess we all have opinions.

@keobooks – If you notice I said “bullying is apparently increasing. I make the comment only because it is talked about so frequently in fluther and in all forms of media.

And I asked what I thought was a sensible question regarding overcrowding. I wanted to know what you meant by it and gave my experience with what is now considered an overcrowded classroom.

If you feel the need to “humor” me because of that, thank you. I don’t see the need for your sarcasm but so be it.

As I said we were in the same classroom all day but when recess time came, we went in line to the playground where we were turned loose. As I recall there were about 6 or 8 toilets and we waited in line to use them. So despite the fact that you humored me I am still not sure exactly what constitutes overcrowding because an area can be overcrowded if there is no organization but comfortable if order is maintained.

And finally, I guess if life is so hard for teachers and they are pissed off to be teachers, then maybe it is time for a change of career. That is what I did when I tired of my initial career, I didn’t just decide to stay with it and do a crap job.

I do think it is interesting that you said and I quote, “Classroom size isn’t really important as people once thought it was.” I take that to mean that even experts such as yourself, occasionally find they too are capable of misinterpreting information and reaching incorrect conclusions. I hope society is as kind as you and humor you too!

I am sorry for getting sarcastic. But I am so sick and tired of hearing people spout off and pontificate about what they think is reality in education when they don’t know. I am tired of people who think they are experts on the subject because they went to school when they were kids. I’m tired of people who don’t get that there are more problems with the school system than apathetic teachers and bad parents who don’t spank their kids or whatever.

Here are some facts:

Until the late 1990s, there were almost NO serious studies on bullying in schools. Bullying was seen as something that was a rite of passage that was unsavory, but everyone had to go through with it. Once Columbine happened, people were scared. And what really scared them was the reactions of kids all over the country who said “It could have been me” and they were talking about the shooters and not the victims.

All of the sudden, administrators, teachers and parents were in a frenzy about bullying. Suddenly, people were terrified that kids across the country were going to go on shooting sprees and so lots and lots of research and books got cranked out really really fast. Bullying got tons of attention from the media and you couldn’t watch a news channel without at least 1 – 2 bullying stories every few hours.

Teachers were required to go to tons and tons and tons of seminars about recognizing bullying and learning how to prevent it. There were classroom management sessions and classes dedicated to things like how the school buildings themselves are inadvertently being used in such a way that it is a breeding ground for bullying.

So all this junk was there all along, but everyone was looking the other way. Suddenly, you couldn’t look at the television, a book display in a store, a magazine or newspaper stand without seeing something about bullying. So suddenly lots of people got the mistaken notion that this was some new upsurge in bullying in the school. There was no upsurge. It would be like sitting in a dark cheap motel room and you think cockroaches magically appear when you turn the lights on. You can just SEE them for the first time.

If that wasn’t bad enough, in 2003 or so, a sociologist decided to study bullying in girls. This sounds strange now, but up until this time period there were MANY educational professionals and armchair educational experts who did not believe that girl bullying even existed—or if it did, it wasn’t a problem worth looking at because girls tended to be less physically violent. After this study there were many more books cranked out and many more media stories about girl bullies. It wasn’t like suddenly in 2003 there were twice as many bullies in the schools. The definition of bullying was expanded to fit a group of behaviors that were not considered bullying behaviors before.

Just because you see it on TV more than you did 10 years ago doesn’t mean that it happens more often. It’s just on the public radar more.

Also, kids don’t live in Skinner boxes with no outside influences except for their parents. You can’t blame the parents for the infrastructure of the school that’s over a century out of date. You can’t entirely blame the parents for administrators saving money and closing down schools and packing kids into building that weren’t meant to hold that many kids.

And FYI, I DID quit teaching because I thought the poor working conditions weren’t worth the hassle. I love kids, but I like having lunch breaks longer than 20 minutes and I can leave and get a burger without asking my boss for permission. I like working in places that I don’t have to monitor the hallways and make sure that kids don’t get into punching fights because someone slammed a book bag into another kid’s face. I don’t like working in places where I see kids treated like incarcerated felons complete with metal detectors and armed police officers on duty patrolling the halls.

It was really sad for me because I love teaching. And there are lots of people who would be teachers except they decided it wasn’t worth it and went to a crap job. The problem is, the people who stay behind aren’t always the best teachers. They are the ones that can stand the sub-par working conditions the best.

@keobooks Very well said. I’m actually planning to leave 9–12 teaching soon for similar reasons. I love teaching, but the system really, really sucks.

You should be able to bust a kid’s ass if you see them punch someone in the face with a bookbag. Just MHO. Aww, for the good old days when teachers had a lounge where they could sit around and bitch and smoke and get all caffeined up while the kids were gym or having a music class.

@keobooks – my original question was asked earnestly and respectfully. I feel I was not answered in the same vein. And I said nothing about teachers so I don’t know why you feel put upon by the question.

But you have brought up interesting questions yourself. Why do they have metal detectors in schools? I assume they are there because kids are bringing weapons to school. Do you think they should be allowed, get rid of the metal detectors? And teachers being attacked, how is that the fault of the system? Again I am compelled to point out that I attended school, college, university for a lot of years and never saw anyone bring an automatic weapon or knife to school. It wasn’t hidden, it simply wasn’t there. You said, “I like working in places that I don’t have to monitor the hallways and make sure that kids don’t get into punching fights because someone slammed a book bag into another kid’s face,” I think some kids always got into fights, I had a few myself, but again I didn’t bring a gun and shoot someone because of it, neither did anyone else.

It appears to me, it is a different kind of kid today. I wonder why and I don’t buy the crowded school corridor theory, there were always crowded schools, kids just reacted differently. That was pretty much what prompted me to ask this question. And the answers I received are pretty much what I expected. It’s not the kids’ fault, it’s not the parents’ fault, it’s not the teachers’ fault. According to you, it is the fault of the system, but isn’t it always!

As for the problems of teachers, I don’t know any occupation that doesn’t have its inherent problems. I had them when I lived the corporate uniform and I have them as a dog trainer, etc.. I have friends who are doctors, nurses, vets, ceo’s as well as plumbers and carpenters and they all have issues. You either stay with it or you change careers.

I found the initial question a bit sarcastic sounding. “If the new and enlightened method of child rearing is so successful and superior to the older ways” sounds exactly like some golden nugget dug out of a Bill O’Riley or Rush Limbaugh transcript when they want to start blaming all of the problems of today on parents who are liberal. Rush Limbaugh frequently asks questions on his radio show almost verbatim and the underlying meaning is, “Why are we paying all these taxes on schools where the kids run wild because the parents don’t discipline them?”

You don’t have to actually put words in like “morons” for the tone to be disrespectful. And somehow I kind of doubt you honestly find the new parenting style “so successful and superior in so many ways.” and were asking in complete earnest curiosity with nothing but utter respect for parents and the public education system.

Why do they have metal detectors in schools? What have I been talking about? Severe overcrowding leads people to behave in extremely hostile and violent ways. Animals do this too. It’s not entirely the fault of the system, but the system is playing a big role. You can’t throw six dogs in a tiny cage together and then blame the dogs when they start fighting.

I don’t think the metal detectors CAN be removed at this point, but someday they will have to go. Right now the system is too far broken to go without them. But metal detectors and cops bring in a vicious cycle. If you treat people like prisoners, they will act like prisoners. Look up the Berkeley experiment.

And you have no idea how crowded the schools are. They have never been this crowded. I know because I’ve done research and written about it. Yes, a school can feel crowded when it’s at max capacity, but unless you’ve been in a school more than double max capacity, you have no idea what that’s like. I taught at a school that was more than double max capacity. Then Hurricane Katrina hit and our school took in 100+ more kids who were refugees from that storm on top of that. We have almost 1000 kids in a school that was meant for 400. I KNOW what crowded is. Don’t even THINK you know what crowded is. If you like, I can dedicate a whole page to that school and what massive overcrowding does to kids and teachers. And these were just elementary school kids. I can’t even imagine what went on in the secondary schools.

I know I’m not going to change your opinions. I just wish there was some hope that perhaps maybe just maybe you’d see that you don’t know exactly what’s up in this situation. The kids aren’t some new sort of kid. They are the same kids mostly. Shorter attention spans, but still pretty much the same.

@keobooks, why weren’t kids so violent when there were one-room schools? My grandfather and one of my aunts both taught at different times in one-room schools. My grandfather encountered some really, really tough boys who were actually just about his age but he handled the situation. Talk about over crowded. Can you imagine 12 grades in one room with one teacher for all of your activity?

@bcunningham , If you are genuinely confused about what differences there are between a one room schoolhouse with 35 kids and a very large institutional building specifically built to warehouse and educate hundreds of kids, I can do a point by point comparison for you.

If you honestly in the bottom of your heart truly believe that I know absolutely nothing about one room school houses and never once imagined what it would be like to teach in one, I can give you a very detailed report on my many many opinions about them.

Somehow, for some strange reason, I get the feeling that you can kind of figure these answers out for yourself. So I’m not going to bother explaining all of the details unless you specifically ask.

It was me who asked the question about one-room schools, @keobooks. Who said they had 35 kids?

Like I said.. I know a little bit about them. Knowing their average classroom sizes is one of those things. So you want to take me up on the point by point?

I didn’t say you knew nothing about one room schools, @keobooks. Geez, it was just a point for discussion. :)

I was just explaining to you where the mysterious number 35 appeared. Did you want me to go to ERIC and look up some sources for you? I am kind of busy and I don’t have access to ERIC here. But that’s kind of fun for me. (Really.. no sarcasm. I should probably have shame about that)

I feel like you are just picking at tiny details and just bringing them out to bicker, so I’m not going to take too much of what you’re asking me too seriously unless your questions seem a bit more in earnest.

Thank you, @keobooks, I can access ERIC. I wasn’t nitpicking. The one room school was just something I thought of while reading the discussion. My dad is 92. A few years ago, he decided to get records from when his father was a public school teacher. He had to file a Freedom of Information request, but got the records.

It was amazing reading back through the records, not only of my grandfather’s employment, but of the students and comments from my grandfather. There were about 88 students squeezed into the school in one year of his teaching in those mountains. My grandfather detailed everything down to who came in and built the fire in the morning to who carried water. I still have the slate my grandfather’s brother used for his lessons when he was in school when they both were young children.

I think in those days, in my grandfather’s case at least, the parents were so hungry for their children to get an education, they laid the law down to the kids about behaviour for the school master. My grandfather boarded with a coal mining family in order for the area to have a teacher. He was a stranger and had many stories to tell about being accepted. The one thing that was consistent though is that after he gained their respect, he was respected for giving their children an education.

@bkcunningham Did you ever read Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder? It documents a bad kid and his gang of friends (the big boys from the Hardscrabble Settlement). The bad kid beat his one room school teacher to death.

New ways often means reusing old ways, perhaps with small adjustments. Not setting limits was popular in the late 60s and 70s. The results were a disaster. Interfering about everything is a disaster as well. The best way is in between.

Today’s problems often have to do with the fact that many children don’t have to earn their wealth, which can be a motivation killer. Kids in India do better in math on average because they want to escape their miserable life. There is the dream of a better life. Parents who spoil their kids rob them of this dream.

@keobooks – I believe you called me a liar. I told you the question was asked respectfully, I don’t have to believe to ask a respectful question about why others believe.

I believe you owe me an apology.

I am sorry that I thought you might be feigning sincerity when you said this quote.

“If the new and enlightened method of child rearing is so successful and superior to the older ways”

If you say it was not meant for anything other than pure and honest inquiry, with no sarcasm whatosever I suppose I am utterly and completely wrong about you. I honestly had no idea anyone would say anything worded in that style and would have no idea how ironic it sounded.

Forgive me one thousand times a thousand.

@keobooks – I think you are giving me sarcastic answers, they certainly have that undertone. And oddly enough as you give them you are accusing me of doing exactly what you are doing.

I don’t know how to rephrase the question so you don’t judge my motives as ulterior. Maybe, “If the current methods of child rearing are so superior (I say so superior because the advocates are certainly vocal enough at making that claim) to those of yesteryear, why are the positive results not more evident?” There is that better???

[Mod Says]: Calm down, folks. No need to make this personal. Let’s get back to the topic at hand.

@keobooks I sympathize with your comments about the school system because I’m a teacher too. However, one comment in your post kind of threw me. You said, “You can’t blame the parents for the infrastructure of the school that’s over a century out of date.” A century ago would have been 1912 so I was wondering what you meant.

@Dutchess_III Most public schools today still use the factory model. During the late 19th century, the Industrial revolution was all the rage and to be extremely modern and high tech, schools were modeled after factories with assembly line style classes, shift bells—the works.

It was a slight exaggeration to say it was a century out of date—60 or 70 years out of date would be more accurate. But the start of the modern school system began around the 1890s and really took form after Henry Ford swept over the country.

Sometimes when I look at our school system, I picture it as one of those really nasty neighborhoods you go through and you can tell that it used to be a really fancy upscale place way back in the day.

But they’re still on the “factory model,” @keobooks. It’s assembly line.

Yes. I think we need something new. We are very much a post industrial society. The factory model is a clunker.

I need to think about it. You know that when you have 20 – 30 kids in one classroom, it’s really important that everyone is, more or less, on the same page. We love individualism, but in a teaching situation, too much of everyone doing their own thing just doesn’t work. Call it “assembly line,” to a certain extent, but I don’t know how that could be helped. I think there’s room for each student to express themselves while working within the same frame work but it takes a scientific artist to juggle that ball…and we aren’t paying those kinds of minds, those kinds of people who CAN do that, enough so they leave.

[mod says] Please take moderation concerns directly to a moderator. Let’s get back to the topic at hand. Thanks!

@Dutchess_III I used to have all sorts of ideas about this, but it’s been a while and things are foggy. I don’t think the only alternative to assembly line teaching is “speshul snowflayke” school.

But when factory model teaching was new and innovative, it was a good model because a big chunk of our society worked in factories and it was reasonable to expect that a big chunk of your students were going to work on an assembly line. It wasn’t ridiculous to teach a kid to raise his hand for permission to use the toilet because that’s exactly what he was going to do on the job when he grew up.

I have many high school friends who are now college professors. They all complain that their all-star high school students are amazingly ill prepared for college. They complain that the students are too passive and seem incapable of any higher level critical thinking. The factory model is designed to create passive and obedient workers who don’t think too deeply about their jobs. With all of this emphasis our society is placing on college and white collar jobs, why are we still teaching students in an environment where people are expected to get a blue collar job where a college degree makes you overqualified?

To bring this back to the topic of school bullying, this is another reason people theorize about what is wrong and why schools aren’t working. The factory model worked fairly well for about 20 years after it was out of date, because many of the parents were still working in factories. But now the factory culture is practically extinct and so schools seem to be this odd alien environment where the rules make no sense outside of that very small world.

I wish I had some answers. Maybe we should work on the “middle management” model. Students in cubicles in front of little computers, playing solitaire and pretending to work when the teacher walks by. Maybe there should be a “retail hell” model where students wear stupid polyester uniforms and walk up and down aisles. Ehh I dunno, but school needs to change its infrastructure so it better matches the current reality and it better prepares students for things like college instead of working in a factory putting sprockets on widgets all day long, raising your hand to go pee and going home when the bell rings.

@keobooks , It did not occur to me that there might be a connection between education model and discipline. I think you are on to something. There is a recent trend in education, strongly resisted by the more conservative, toward project or problem based learning. It is much closer to the way work has become, giving students general projects or a problem that can be tackled in many different ways. In these models, the teacher spends most of the time acting as a resource rather than standing in front of the room and lecturing. It would not surprise me at all that when students are given more responsibility, work together and are encouraged to be creative that there will be fewer discipline problems, including bullying.

@keobooks It’s all so intangible. There have always been students who excelled in spite of their up bringing, and students who could care less spite of their up bringing. That will never change. I think we always have had, and always will have, adults who have something spectacular to bring to society, then we’ll have adults who are very productive, then adults who just do what they have to do, then adults who….sponge. They’re the same people as adults as they were as students. I can’t think of any model we might have in THIS society that would make any difference.
I’ve been teaching economics to one of my students and he and I have been having discussions. The other students are working on completely different classes, but sometimes they like to get involved in whatever discussion. One of my other students (who, BTW, is extremely intelligent….have yet to let him know he’s smarter than I am!) asked, “Well, are we (the class) Producers or Consumers?”
I just stared at him with my mouth open a little, not believing this bright kid even asked that question. I didn’t say a word, just inclined my head a bit, and he went “Oh man!! Now that just really sucks.”
I just nodded my head. Ya duz.
I know he went back and discussed this with his cell mates.
Since then I’ve noticed essays coming in that say, “When I get out I want to be a productive member of society.” I don’t think they ever thought if it like that before.
Maybe…I really can make a difference.
Me thinks I just digressed!

I’ve read articles in the Atlantic Monthly and in education journals that echo what @keobooks is saying. Our current educational system is based on the Prussian Military Model designed for maximum compliance and workforce efficiency.

I just completed a behavior management course using this textbook and the majority of the textbook talks about how the teacher’s vibe, energy, tone of voice and the classroom setting (for acoustics, temperature, color, space, etc) do greatly affect a students’ behaviors.

Almost all my pedagogy classes would bring up external factors that affect student learning—home environment, whether they got breakfast, family dynamics, family values, community values, their clothing, amount of sleep, type of food… all that has been proven to affect student learning and behavior to varying degrees.

After 9 years in a classroom, I have seen all this to be true—a student’s behavior is affected by 100 different factors, but a large part is affected by their basic needs- food, clothing, water and temperature. and they are not able to reach their full potential without their needs met.

So, if the environment of the school is not comfortable (the most basic need) and safe (the second tier of basic needs), kids are not going to be interested in learning and self-actualization.

This article seems appropriate here. It talks about a perceived moral decline, that (arguably) doesn’t actually exist.