Children should be seen and NOT heard?

[scottrussell]

Did I make a few faces behind teachers backs or make comments to my friends? Sure. But I would never even dream of cursing at one of my teachers or anything of that sort. Yes, I would get a detention for it, but I also know that I'd have a broken jaw when my parents found out. There was no room for conduct like that in my parent's household, and there won't be in my household either.
Teachers don't get enough respect as it is. We don't need to let snotty junior and senior high school students show them disrespect. When you hear the way some parents have talked to my mom (teacher of 30 or so years) it's no surprise why their kids are little wretches.

and just to add...my father is a teacher at a fairly bad school close to the city... and he is the most liked person at that school. Not because he's some strict SOB that demands respect...but because he's got personality and actually identifies with his students instead of being some straight laced adult with less personality than a stalk of celery. he realizes that things are less than perfect...and when your a kid whose dad you've never met before and all you hear is that your just a punk kid and teachers file you into a category and write you off as such your biggest interest isn't school or being polite. my dad is so good with these kids, that when other kids mouth off to him the STUDENTS tell the kid to shut up and respect my dad because they know he's done a lot of them and been really understanding of them. i think kids are a lot more intelligent and capable than adults give them credit for and that's because when you grow up you lose something and you completely forget about it. and with that said a lot of people stay the way they are...there are a lot of idiot kids now that are going to grow up to be the idiot adults we see in the grocery store, live next door to and work together with. the whole "kids these days" is such a cop out. we are all humans and no matter how socially different history repeats itself and people always do the SAME stuff and come to the same conclusions as we grow up. a rowdy kid grows up, reforms and then complains about "how things weren't like this when i was a kid". kids have dads that beat them and they hate them for it, so naturally when they have kids they find themselves doing the same crap to their kids. now i'm only 19 and you guys are going to chalk everything i say up to my age, but i completely and whole heartedly disagree with some of the stuff said here. descrimination due to age is just as frusterating and telling anyone (children are people, everybody is people) that what they say doesn't hold water or they need to know their place is just as insulting as how people used to say the same things about other groups of people in the past.

 

[jenkva]

What a discussion! It is so interesting to read you all and see what your view points are.

I think that the main issues are that kids of all ages need to know the boundaries of what is allowed and not allowed, be talked to like adults, to be given some responsibilities but at the same time, the adults need to make sure that it is not too much for them. This should enable children to learn the values that people require in life.
I had a History teacher that was very strict but we also had fun with him as he knew that a quick joke in the class would help release the tension that builds up when kids have reached the maximum of their attention span, afterwards, we had our laugh, we could continue with the lesson. We knew how far we could go with him and knew that if we overstepped the mark, we would be in trouble.

I do not have children but have a lot of cousins which are younger than me and I have always talked to them like adults, explain the why and because of things. I did not tell them straight away “don’t bother doing/attempting this/that because you are too young”, I would say “let’s try together and see if we can do it”, I would assist them in doing whatever they wanted to do and advised them on how to do it. I think being grown up with children helps them mature in a positive manner but if you judge them straight away, they will do whatever comes to their minds without thinking if it is an accepted thing of not as, anyway, nobody cares!

 

[ultimuttone]

This has been an interesting discussion.
I find it interesting though that the majority of people who claim frustration with todays children and the lack of good parenting are not themselves parents.
There are a lot of things that make parents and children of today different than say when I was a kid. The legal system has tied both parents and educators hands in the area of discipline. Sometimes how much depends on the area you live. The more liberal the area the less corporal punishment is accepted. There are also many more single parent homes and less extended family which makes keeping tabs on kids more difficult and creates guilt in parents who then overcompensate. Many things that we considered 'treats' as children are now an expected staple of everyday life. An many things we expected as normal discipline will now put a parent in jail. I know all of these things first hand . But one thing that hasn't changed...there were rowdy punka**kids when I was young, when my father was young, when my grandfather was young and now. I was a rebellious teenager, and did many things I wouldn't want to ever catch my own kids doing just as there are things they have done I wouldn't ever have considered.
I don't think it is kids who have changed as much as it is society that has changed in its consideration of what is acceptable. Children of each era are just a reflection of that. Foul language, sex and nudity in the media, unwed/teenage pregnancy, and deadly weapons were not accepted in my childhood days. Now even our animated characters cuss like sailors on primetime tv, anything but total nudity and actual sex acts are at most pg13(however they are openly discussed on every morning radio show), they have daycare in city highschools, and metal detectors at the door. This is not the fault of todays children but a change in our society as a whole.

And in response to another comment. ADD is a valid disorder. It is not an excuse to be a loser, but it can create various learning disorders that need to be compensated for or dealt with. Like any disorder it can be used as a crutch or properly treated. That is an indiviual choice.

Anyway, enough of my soapbox ...

 

[zwyatt]

and just to add....

To be honest, I don’t think a teacher’s teaching style has anything do with it. I also don’t think it’s how they relate to the kids. I think it’s all about some intangible quality that makes kids like them. Some teachers have it and some don’t. The ones who do have it COMMAND respect without DEMANDING it, and they do so while maintaining a relaxed atmosphere and still get the curriculum objectives completed.
I can’t say that intangible quality is personality or character. I had an English teacher in high school, who I couldn’t disagree with more on his principles and many of the things he did and said, but his classroom would be one of the first I would choose to spend time in over most other teachers. You quickly learned the boundaries without being lectured on them.

I think the big point here is that you look at the other side and say that they are just making cop-out remarks, but your entire argument is only a justification for why it is acceptable for kids to be irresponsible and disrespectful. You are justifying bad behavior as a result of youth. Saying that “kids will be kids” and adults just don’t understand is just as much of a cop-out response as anything else.

I haven’t forgotten anything from my youth, and there isn’t a single thing that I can remember that supports your mindset. I guess that’s just a result of our different backgrounds and upbringings. I never before realized what a generation gap there was between 19 and 20 year olds these days.


As for your closing remarks…I think we need to take a step back and take a deep breath before we liken punishing a kid for mouthing off to racism. They are not even close and having to make some obscure, completely exaggerated claim like that just shows the weakness of the argument.



One last thing...seeing as I am older than you...RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH!

 

[Sisuitl]

This has been a pretty interesting discussion. I just wished to add a couple of remarks in regards to the younger children out there.

Please don't judge the parents of screaming crazy children in the grocery store. I used to, until I met a woman with twin boys, both 6 years old and both with severe autism. Outwardly, they appeared to be healthy whole children. The reality was extremely different. Being a single mother, there was no possible way she could ever go out in public while leaving her sons unattended. What was she supposed to do? Not buy groceries? It was very sad because one day she was at the store and they were yelling, singing, staring at stuff, trying to grab things off shelves and some woman came up and started yelling at her about how she needs to control her children and teach them some manners, and that she was a terrible mother whose children were going to grow up to be axe murderers because she couldn't teach them manners. It was right about then she burst into tears and had a complete nervous breakdown. Situations like hers are admittedly rare, but you have no way of knowing what might be going on with the people around us, and who you might be destroying with careless words.

Rather than berate the kids and parents a polite but firm, "All that screaming is giving me a headache, please stop," really does go a long way. Or if a mother looks like she might be struggling with a load of kids, maybe offering to help or even saying something to one of them like a stern, "Why aren't you listening to your mother and/or father?" works well. Children tend to respond very well to strange adults.

 

[diamondlil]

Great points being raised here. I am the proud mother of 3 teenage boys, and the complexity of their personalities while they are full of raging hormone levels is fascinating, they go from helpful to door-slamming, grandslam all in fights to sitting working out computer programming together, all gentle and sweet with animals, polite mostly to strange adults, rude as heck to me, but I can come in from a 13 hour day to find they've done all the housework and have a bath ready for me, or have wrecked the place but cooked me a dinner. A good friend of mine told me you just have to try to give a child the preparation and values in their youth that you believe in, hang on tight during their teens, then wait to see how they develop.
Most of the time I really like my boys, when I don't I tell them they only survive because I'm genetically programed not to kill them!