What's the Matter With Kids Today

[xoxoxoBruce]

I was reading a forum of High School and College Teachers about how students had changed over the years. This comment by a person who'd been teaching at a state college for about 10 years made an impression.

If you think it's just me, all teachers teaching incoming freshman last year had to attend a lecture series given by a couple of the deans regarding the demographics and habits of our incoming freshman.
Basically, the takeaway was this:
We should not expect students to be able to pay attention in class. We should not expect students to be able to socialize easily with their classmates. We should not expect students to be able to understand and/or figure out a syllabus. We should not expect students to be able to manage their own personal affairs outside of the classroom. We should not expect them to be able to self-task in terms of research/self-education.

We should expect more phone calls from parents, more parental intervention, and a heavy reliance on parents by our students who, we were informed, are likely texting their parents during and/or immediately after classes if they get grades they feel are unfair. Most of the "we should not expect students to be able to do X" comes from research that the deans cited (I don't remember if it was from our university or published in a journal or what) that shows that most of those issues stem from that extreme reliance on other people, typically parents for younger students, through all of their K-12 education. AKA, their parents did so much for them down to explaining class expectations and how a course works (syllabuses), that now that they're expected to do it on their own, they can't because they've never really done it.

I think the deans maybe were a bit hyperbolic, but most of that does seem to be true for a lot of students now, and I will say this: until three years ago, I had NEVER received a phone call or email from a parent regarding their children's grades and/or academic performance. Since 2014, I have received numerous phone calls and probably a half dozen emails.

You want to see a helicopter parent lose their shit? Explain to them that their children are legally adults and due to FRPA guidelines, I can't discuss their grades or academic performance with them.

There seemed to be a lot of teachers, HS and college, agreeing.