Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy Smith
............ The world is always changing. People adapt to their environment. Generalizations about a whole demographic are problematic because they're based not on any kind of wide field sample, but personal anecdotal experiences, which many have said both range from good to bad. ...............
|
And those changes are often not for the better.
I can tell you that from over 35 years with my wife in the child care business, first beginning work in a child care center in the 70's to us owning and operating a large child care center for over 30 years that we sold in 2017, the changes in discipline, respect, manners, and overall personality of both the children and their parents changed significantly over those years. Certainly not all of them, but a much greater percentage than the early years. There were few problems with disruptive children at first. And after speaking with the parent(s) about it, the parents would address those problems at home and the child would generally be much better afterward. But the number grew over the years. In the later years when the parent was confronted with issues about behavior of their children it would be more likely the parent trying to pass the blame on the teacher, other children, or whatever other reason they could come up with. Their child would not do that. On rare occasion the parent might admit they had those problems at home but they did not know how to handle it.
My wife has an amazing ability to calm a disruptive child and get them to perform much better in the classroom environment. Even though she was the owner/director, she spent a large part of her time in the classrooms working directly with children, knowing all their names, and often playing games with them. When a child had some issue, there was no scolding, no raised voice, certainly no physical discipline. Just has a way of speaking to a child in a loving manner, and explaining why they can't behave in such a way, and that loving way would make the child want to please her. But in the later years even that became more difficult. She would do everything possible to avoid having to ask a parent to take their child out of the center. And it only happened 2-3 times over all those years, breaking her heart each time not knowing what would happen to that child.
Pure speculation, but I would guess that a poll of public school teachers who taught over that same era would reveal similar feelings. I know there have been teachers who have quit or retired for that reason.