Todays Kids....
My kids go to a very special and wonderful school. It is a Charter school that has grade K to 12. In NC, a Charter school is a public school, though it gets less money per child than the county systems, that is run directly by the parents. To get into the school, you just have to sign up and with popular schools, you might have to win a lottery drawing to get a seat.
The big advantage to this school, and I think for similar Charters, is that the kids are together from K to 12 so they are in a big one room school house so to speak. The different grades help the other grades, there is no class system like when I was in school. The kids have to learn to deal with each other because the school is small compared to county schools and the kids will be with each for year. If the kids have a problem with each other, they have to resolve it which seems to help the kids mature. The other advantage for the Charter is that the kids parents are involved if only to sign up their kid to get them in the school as opposed to dropping them off at the county school.
For the last few years, I use up some very valuable vacation time to chaperone multi day school trips. The other parents don't know what they are missing, or to put it another way, what I am gaining for using some vacation time. I get to see how the kids behave outside the home and how they relate to others. Parents don't usually get to see this at all.
What has impressed me is how well these kids behave, not only to others out of the school, but within the group. During last years trip a retired Navy vet come up to me and another chaperone who were watching over the kids. The vet thought we were teachers and he came up to tell us how well our kids were behaving.
He told us that after he retired from the Navy he taught in school for awhile and many of his kids were a PITA and would not behave. Course that was quite a few decades ago.
On the same trip, we had stopped at a restaurant for dinner and after we had been there for an hour or so, the manager came over and told us how wonderful are kids were behaving. She said they get buses of kids that are just terrors and run all of the restaurant.
These kids are far different than the kids I went to school with. They are far BETTER! There are kids in the school who have mental issues and the kids accept these kids and treat them very well. In my day, there is no way these kids would have survived in school. On the last trip, one of the kids with issues was playing in the dirt which is not "normal" behavior for a child at this age. For some reason, I am always assigned boys who are, shall we say, a bit energetic.
A group of these "energetic" boys saw the other kid playing in the dirt and I was waiting for them to pick on him. Instead they talked with him like a human being.
When I was a kid, that child would have been picked on mercilessly, and in that situation, they would have likely thrown dirt at that child.
Last years trip was for the eighth grade and this trip was a keystone event for the kids since they were moving to High School and they knew they were starting to leave their childhood behind. There was an event that took place at night in a round shelter with a fire in the middle. The kids could get up and talk about anything. They could complain or say what made them thankful. Its hard to explain what I saw over that few hours but it was the most emotional event I have ever seen. Some of the kids admitted to the group their drug issues they had delt with. Others kids were dealing with other issues. The kids were very thankful for their friends, teachers and parents. There were only three faculty on the trip, one of whom is VERY popular with the kids. Another teacher is very young, just out of college and has much to learn about life, teaching and kids but he is very popular as well. My child does not get along with this teacher and vice versa.
My kid took the "open mike" opportunity to tell the teacher what they thought of him.
What was funny is that the other kids agreed with what my child had to say.
This teacher, as many others at the school do, has a calling to teach. He really is a good teacher, he just turned 21, yes 21, and he has to learn a bit about kids, himself and teaching.
These kids are not perfect that is for sure but they are far better behaved, far more respectful of their peers, teachers, parents and others than the kids I went to school with many decades ago. I went to many schools in four states so I got a good education on a large number of schools/kids compared to most people. The kids at my children's school are very well behaved and growing into pretty dang mature kids young men and women.
Later,
Dan