I'm seeing this growing sense of frustration from teachers about how their students are just seemingly crazy right now. They don't care that they're failing. They're constantly interrupting class. They feel entitled to just do whatever they want.
And I've seen teachers talking about this and seemingly at a loss as to why this is happening. And I've seen astute responses talking about how the pandemic really fucked up alot of kids socialization, and that is apart of it. But I think there's two bigger factors at play here. The first is kinda simply, why should these kids give a shit? How many of them live in homes with parents who are busting their asses at thankless jobs filled with stress and barely able to afford the bills? What kind of example does that set? If you get good grades and work your ass off, the fruit of your labour is gonna be a tedious soulless job working for some dickhead, and a society that doesn't give a fuck about you and only cares about acquiring as much short term wealth as possible for an elite class of rich assholes. Of course they aren't gonna give an iodo of a fuck about adapting into that hell scape into a life. And that's assuming that the climate change doesn't cause massive catastrophe or some egomaniacal dictator with a tuna can for a penis doesn't start world war 3. Alot of these kids have no hope. And how can we blame them for that. But the second thing is that really insidious part. This disenfranchisement these kids and their parents are feeling isn't a byproduct of our current system. It's completely intentional. Because what does this all lead to? We have teachers quitting in droves and the public education system as a whole is completely falling apart. The poor and working class are kept in their station through a war of attrition that erodes our public institutions so the fascists can then point at those institutions and say how big a failure public education is and how we shouldn't be bound by that socialist nonsense. The answer? Privatize it. Pay wall it. Keep the elite in place. And create a chasm between the working class and the Rich. And do everything you can to keep the working class feeling disenfranchised and exhausted. Beat them down to the point of apathy and non participation. And this is absolutely working. If you wanna see just how well it is, look at the folks on social media talking about how they aren't gonna vote next year. They fell so stripped of agency that suppressing their vote is a last ditch attempt to voice some semblance of control over their station.