Amen to this. I've been working the last nineteen years in a rather affluent middle class school and in just that amount of time I've seen the difference. In addition to exploding cases of autism (no, we're not just diagnosing better) and conduct disorder, we're seeing far more kids (and I'm talking primary school) who are not equipped emotionally or even intellectually to start school. Then it gets even more complicated when you throw in the kids who ARE ready but are also vastly enriched and light-years above the others. This chasm starts getting big in second grade and balloons by the end of elementary school.

To combat everything you've written here, we are told over and over and over again to build "positive relationships" with the kids. All of them. Even the ones who tell you to eff off and throw chairs at your head, or hit you and curse at you, on day one of school and everyday after. I can safely say, in many cases, that it used to work twenty years ago. Even fifteen. But in the last ten or so something has flipped in kids. Personally, I see it as a combination of the following: entitlement encouraged by the parents. School as just a stepping stone to college and teachers as doormats. Grades meaning far, far more than learning anything. A huge increase in ADHD especially in boys. A lack of interest in books by fifth grade (the decline by nine is real). And too much anxiety driven by endless concern over social status (this one caught my daughter). In other words, everything you basically wrote is true.

But you know what? In the little private Catholic school I've been assigned by my district to teach special Ed in, the incoming sixth grade coach is only 6 kids. Last spring in fifth grade I spent all of June teaching basic, rudimentary philosophy lessons to them. Totally extracurricular and they loved it. I found it in one class, when I posed a question for discussion that had to do with social media and its influences, that not a single one of them owned a cell phone. My jaw hit the floor when I found that out. No wonder they were bright, curious, and willing to participate. I had to scrap that planned lesson and pivot to another topic, because they didn't have the necessary life experience to weigh in on the topic I'd prepared for that day... But I was thankful! A tiny class size, close relationships with all the teachers, and a building administration not looking over teachers shoulders is a great place to start to fix some of these problems.

But in the meantime, I wrote the article below about my take on what needs to happen to wrest back control of our schools.

Thanks for writing this essay!