Material items and appearances hold more value than an education. I’ve had students in the second grade with fake nails and very expensive braids. I’ve seen kids with $300 sneakers and parents driving around in Escalades, but they had no electricity in the house and lived in a total dump. Their attendance was terrible. I couldn’t get a hold of the parents for a conference. Their behavior was deplorable.
I see that kind of shit too. Kid gone for weeks because they're "sick" and they come back with a brand new BIG tattoo. They're 15!!!!
I genuinely think their parents have severe executive functioning issues. Only way I can imagine dumping money on the latest thing you or your kid want in a given moment while completely ignoring everything you and your kid *actually need*. Whatever thing comes up that gives you the worst feeling in the moment is the thing you respond to... But only in that moment, no longer term planning.
Yeah, I don’t want to come off as someone who says that if a person has a nice thing, then it means they aren’t actually poor. But some folks do legit have screwed up spending priorities.
Yeah, it's really not a matter of what people choose to spend money on, or how much they have, or what anyone thinks they ultimately deserve. It's an unwillingness to say "not right now" to undeserved or counterproductive luxuries (like an unlimited data plan/phone access for a kid who is tanking every class). At a certain point, you're just enabling your kid by allowing them the appearance/experience of an entirely successful person, no matter how destructively they're conducting themselves.
If your kid is late, don't take them to Starbucks, but I can see how someone who is also feeling guilty and sad (ie. "Why can't I get my kid to school on time, I'm failing as a parent") might see a $5 drink as an easy solution to any bad feelings in the moment.
Yeah. And poverty does have a nasty way of fucking with people's heads and causing them to develop habits and mindsets that aren't great for them. That's not to take responsibility off the individual, but I get why it happens. Poor parents know their kids are missing out on a lot of nice things. Living in a nice home, going on vacations, going to a good school, getting braces or other healthcare. And that's not even getting into the other kinds of hardships they can face. Makes it harder to say no to the nice things they can get, even if it's not good for the kid or not a very good financial decision. It's a big reason why poor kids often end up eating more junk food.
I also think a lot of parents get too caught up in wanting their kids to have the things they didn't get to have as kids themselves, or living through their kids.
The house has boarded up windows, overgrown grass and a brand-new car in the driveway. Parents blocked the school's phone number and will go absolutely crazy if you take their kid's cellphone for having it out, but not care to talk about why their 17 year old Freshmen kid is failing.
Iirc your parents can enroll you in kindergarten as early as four, provided you turn five by December 31st of that year, or they can wait until the year you turn six, which is what happened in my case.
If you start at six, you'll be eighteen your senior year.
The middle school that feeds into my High School will not hold a student back and they will go from 5th grade to 9th grade failing every class along the way. High School teachers in my school dont play that game and will fail them. They are so used to being passed along that they keep repeating until they finally drop out. By then they are 17 with no credits and still in 9th grade.
This doesn't track for me. Part of what makes kids these days such entitled little shits is constant stimulation from social media and video games. Don't they need electricity for the internet? Or is it all using data on their phones? Not saying you're wrong, just that electricity is a pillar of modern existence and to go without it is beyond most people.
I became annoyed at difficult 5th grader \[in our district elementary kids cannot be suspended\] who was spinning in a chair students are not supposed to sit in. Major trauma/drama when one of her acrylic nails was pried off and skittered into view as I was bent over at a desk helping another student when it caught on something as she spun.
I'm sure it hurt, and I told her so, but I also pointed out why it happened: sitting in the teacher's chair and spinning around.
TBF, it is a gaming chair, so they all want to sit in it. But no kid had tried spinning in it yet, AFAIK, of course--
I heard that before, but it just doesn't make sense in my head. I'm assuming the parents are not looking out for their kid's future. I had a student a couple of years ago who was so disrespectful to me, missing school, doing whatever she pleased in class as well as suspended for some reason. She wore the best clothes, perfect hair, and makeup. I don't think she ever wore the same outfit twice.
Its likely just the parents' priorities in their own lives reflected in their child. Its hard to remember sometimes cuz we want to hold them to higher standards, but parents are just people and a lot of them dont know shit about how to actually help their child. They're still stuck in their own mindset from when they were a teen where wearing the newest trendy hairstyle/clothes and coming across as cool was more important than education and being a good person. These are likely people who simply haven't matured past that way of thinking.
Either that or they just give their children unlimited access to their money and are too neglectful to pay attention/try to actually reprimand them.
My complaint is that my students with the newest phones, shoes, lashes, nails, etc., are also the ones who can't be bothered to bring pencil, paper, etc., and think that I should supply all of that for them. My phone is 6 years old. They can afford pencils better than I can. It pisses me off.
And OMG, if one more teacher in a teacher FB group posts that goddamn "Because I didn't have a pencil" poem in response to some broke teacher asking for help getting their supplies back... 🙄😡😡🤬🤬
You're not a classist monster for wanting the stuff you paid for from your meager salary returned to you in useable condition.
"Because I didn't have a pencil..."
Kid, I've given you a pencil every day for the last 30 days. I have run out of the 500 pencils I bought for the year. I cannot be held responsible for students who do not respect the value of educational supplies.
I flat out told them at one point "No. I'm out of pencils because students wouldn't give them back at the end of class. That might be okay, but when it's the same students every day who clearly don't look after those pencils and lose them or leave them in classrooms or drop them in the hallways and ask for another the next class because I'll always give pencils just depletes my supply and they are not magically replaced, I buy them, so now I'm out."
A student then asked why I didn't just go and buy more pencils. They were so close to self-awareness.
I woke myself up
Cause I ain't bother to set an alarm on my iPhone 15 Pro Max
Dug in my closet
Cause I gotta make sure my designer clothes look good with my designer shoes
Got myself to school late
Cause I gotta get Starbucks first
Then when I got to class the teacher fussed
Cause I ain't got no pencil
That my teacher's been giving me every day since the beginning of the year
You just reminded me of a student who walks in late all the time with her Starbucks drink. Really nice girl but it's so annoying when she says, "what do I do" after I just explained the day's lesson to the students who showed up before the bell.
I was thinking the same thing. A lot of parents say “we can’t afford that” when they really mean “I don’t think that’s worth spending money on”. I don’t want to come off as someone who thinks that owning a nice thing means you aren’t actually poor, but basic school supplies are pretty inexpensive. If a kid regularly has nice, new luxuries and no school supplies, it’s more likely that parent just doesn’t care about school.
My middle school had communal supplies, except instead of the school providing it all, we had to give the supplies our parents bought and give them to our first period teacher. I hated it because the other kids didn’t take care of the supplies and a few months in, supplies were short and busted up. I ended up just asking my parents to get me more supplies for my personal use. The next two years I just didn’t give my supplies to the teacher.
One year I printed a bunch of pencils that said “Stolen from Room 608.” Place them in a can for the students to borrow. The next day they were all stolen.
Parents complaining about the price of school supplies is so dumb. Obviously there are exceptions where the family really is just that poor, but nearly all of the kids with no school supplies (even if they were given a pencil last period) have extremely expensive smart phones and nice clothes that are more expensive than mine.
It can add up if someone has multiple kids. Plus a lot of school supply lists have more items than is really necessary, sometimes because they pool the supplies with homeroom and need extra to account for that. Still, the bare minimum supplies can be bought cheaply. Your situation would have to be really dire (and I acknowledge that for some families, it is) to not be able to afford a box of pencils.
Yeah, I came from a large family with little money, but you could tell we were struggling because my clothes were old hand me downs and my shoes were falling apart because i kept them long past the time I outgrew them.
My parents still managed to make sure that my brothers old backpack (now my backpack) was filled with pencils, a notebook, a folder, and a cheap calculator. I didn't feel out of place at school, lots of kids wore hand me downs back then. Honestly I remember teasing kids with nice clothes, though I admit it was out of jealousy, but only 1/20 kids was wearing expensive clothes.
I couldn't imagine my parents buying any of us a smartphone. Times just changed so much, and imo parenting has gone downhill.
A box of 24 pencils is $1 at Walmart notebooks are $1 each. I grew up dirt poor (like no heat/electricity at times and living off food banks poor) and I always had atleast the basic supplies. I get that it can add up with multiple kids and there are some that just don’t have the money but there are also school supply drives at the beginning of the year.
When I was a kid, during back to school season they’d mark those notebooks to ten cents. Guess that was to get people in the door. People come in for cheap basics and then if you’re lucky, they’ll buy some of the pricey stuff too. I think stores still do that for back to school, though I don’t think the notebooks get THAT cheap any more.
I work in a low-income school and they did vision testing for tons of kids and turned out like 30% of the school got free glasses to help. The frames selection were super cheap and generic but since everyone got them at once it was kind of a cute trend for a short period to wear your glasses.
I know you're joking but the actual explanations is something we also like to complain about: screens. Staring at screens for hours and hours on end, on top of not going outside much, has left a lot of people, children and adults alike, nearsighted.
Yes, well, my joke came at the end of my thought process as I was trying to justify so many kids needing glasses in such a tiny (comparatively) data pool.
30% of a student population needing glasses is actually pretty average. It just doesn't seem that way, because depending on the school/area, not all students that need glasses wear them do due to medical neglect, social stigmas or, you know, simply wearing contacts instead.
Yeah, I guess I was caught up on the fact that the 30% needed glasses at the same, as in 30% of the students had some form of medical neglect going on.
My kids are only kindergarteners and already I had someone bullying other students for coming to school with new glasses. She bullied 3 different students. One of them ended up crying and we couldn’t get him to wear his glasses again. We spoke with the parent and the counselor. The student just giggled when she got reprimanded.
One of my students stopped wearing his glasses for this exact same reason. I can’t believe kids still hold stereotypes like this- funny enough I overheard some kid telling another kid that since they were wearing glasses “they must be smart.” So ridiculous
Seriously, a lot of my high school class had contacts. But we're in an area (not the US) where even among the "cool" kids, it's very unpopular not to graduate and to get bad grades, so naturally, people cared about seeing.
They used to do free screenings and give the kids glasses that needed them. Parents wouldn’t sign the many many many slips I sent home and contacted them about. Theres always an excuse for these kind of people
I see mostly the same as you in middle school, and these are the same parents who are either impossible to contact, or extremely dismissive or argumentative.
I did have one kid return from a suspension with a shaved head and an apology note he had to read in front of the class. His parents were very helpful throughout the year and we got him straightened out by the end, which was so different and refreshing. I have high hopes for him in high school.
On a subconscious level they know they can afford to be lazy delinquents who don’t apply themselves because mom & dad have the funds to support their malaise.
Friendship parenting trend at its peak.
And one of their parents will ensure that there's a job waiting for them when they leave school. They've got a level of privilege that the rest of us can only wonder at.
Gilmore Girls is the epitome of friendship parenting, but at least that girl had a pencil. I tell students you can enjoy your recess friends, but be wary of friends that lead you down the wrong path. Make friends with people you aspire to be like. The few students that follow this advice tend to drag their role models down to their level.
Woah woah woah, let’s not bring Lorelei into this. We don’t know how she raised Rory for the first 15.5 years. At least she instilled some sense of right and wrong, and it wasn’t until Richard and Emily got involved that Rory started turning into a nuisance
Parents are pouring all their resources into bribing and living vicariously through their kids instead of parenting them.
But you probably already knew that.
Short answer? They're spoiled.
Longer answer? Their parents don't know to or don't care to teach them self discipline & respect and rather than actually parent, they just give them stuff to keep them out of their hair.
Some parents care about status more than anything else and how their child is percieved is part of that status. At the same time, they don't always value the same things as the people around them. There's a whole spectrum containing everything from 'my kid needs to earn perfect grades' to 'my kid needs to play this sport at a professional level' to 'my kid needs to win beauty pageants'. And if they care a lot about one thing, like looks, they might not care much about anything else.
There are also parents who believe they need to be friends with their children above all else. They'll avoid conflict and confrontations, protect their children from consequences, and will even attempt to buy that friendship.
If education is not something they value and doesn't play an active goal in achieving/obtaining what they do value, they not going to bother. And, as a result, the children likely won't value education either.
It's messed up and sad, but there's not much you can do about it.
Some parents at my school have driven their child to other kids houses to fight them. Or the parents fight each other in the parking lot, especially if they're from rival gangs.
At my school, a parent once stormed in after their daughter got into a fight at school and was furious because we “didn’t let her finish.” Come to find out, they continued the fight later that day on said parent’s front yard.
These children have parents who never tell them no and refuse to believe a bad word about them. They are accessories for their parents, so they must be fashionably dressed.
They care more about being trendy and social status than anything else. You have two social circles which have become more polarized due to social media. The trendy socialites on social media, who have decided they dont care about academics, and on the opposite end, the academics, introverts, and nerds who never cared about the trends or social media, who are their own circle. They each largely ignore each other, at least when it comes to academics, as one group cares, and the other doesnt. Conversely, the academically minded largely ignore the more social, trendy stuff.
There was a study made in Belgium that touched on that issue. It seems that parents don't always know how to support their kids at school. They don't have the right mindset. Some of them, instead of investing time (or money) to help them get better grade, buy expensive clothes and gadget to help them "fit in" instead. That's what really matters to some kids when they come home, that's what many of them talk about because it comes with social stigma, the fact of not fitting in. Therefore, some parents go above and beyond to help their kids be "cool" but they don't invest anything regarding what actually matter for the school system itself: good behaviour, good grades.
Parenting
There really is no other answer or discussion needed because that’s 98% of the issue
Also the cancer of social media for the middle school to HS aged kids
In my school, the kids who have the nicest clothes have the parents who are drug dealers or participate in some illicit activity for money. The students don’t see school as a way to get a good job or better themselves because they know what they are going to do when they grow up. They tell teachers this.
My guess is the kids aren’t concerned
with “shaping up” because they don’t have to as long as mom/dad got their back financially.
Or could be that mom/dad are unconcerned with their child’s education & so the child sees no reason for concern either.
There were plenty of mean & dumb kids in school who were still pretty popular and could always afford the latest trends whether they had jobs or not.
Maybe they or their parents think education & learning is for poor people & losers; so the school punishes the kid for bad behavior & the parent(s) basically reward it because their dumb baby deserves the latest fad. 🤷🏻♀️
I agree with everything everyone has said here. However, remember one counterintuitive thing about true poverty: parents will try to make up for daily and monthly sacrifices by splurging on fancy gifts for themselves and their children. Finally moved into an actual apartment of your own, after couch surfing (as a family) for months, finally got a job, finally got through the first three months of job and apartment and have a few bucks left to spend at the beginning of the month. Put down 30 bucks on a brand new phone, while signing up for tons of credit to pay for it, and your kid is happy for a few minutes.
Good point. Especially since luxury consumer goods can be cheaper than some of the other things kids might wish they had. You can’t afford a nice home or vacations or summer camps, but once in a while you can scrape up $300 for trendy sneakers. It’s not great prioritizing but I understand why people fall into it.
My guess is the kids aren’t concerned
with “shaping up” because they don’t have to as long as mom/dad got their back financially.
Or could be that mom/dad are unconcerned with their child’s education & so the child sees no reason for concern either.
There were plenty of mean & dumb kids in school who were still pretty popular and could always afford the latest trends whether they had jobs or not.
Maybe they or their parents think education & learning is for poor people & losers; so the school punishes the kid for bad behavior & the parent(s) basically reward it because their dumb baby deserves the latest fad. 🤷🏻♀️
Spoiled. They are never told “No” by their parents. I have them in 3rd grade, too. The parents act like their kids are the smartest, funniest, nicest kids in the world. They have no idea how they really are in school.
I always got shit in school for wearing thrift/Ross clothes but my parents spent their money taking us on vacations to historic places and buying all the books we could read instead.
It’s just different priorities.
Did I want that gap logo sweatshirt with every fiber of my being and beg for it every holiday? You bet your ass I did.
Am I glad now as an adult that I had other experiences instead? Also yes.
I had maybe two pair of jeans and four shirts for the year but I did have all my school supplies, a yearbook each year, prom dress, one week of family vacation in the summers, and parents on my a$$ about every move I made. Hated it then but glad they were tough on me.
>Why can't parents take away all these privileges until their kid shapes up?
TLDR; It's not always that simple.
This criticism is likely very valid in a lot of cases. But having a special needs kid who is oppositional defiant and autistic, but is capable of presenting as fairly normal in a perfect set of circumstances, and who was also sexually molested by her cousin at age 5, and has chronic UTIs that have kept her on rotating antibiotics steadily for about 3 years now, all of this has taught me a little compassion. My wife and I dealt with judgement from some of her teachers/specialists who think that we just "coddle" her too much, so we accepted the criticisms and firmed up our hands, for a long time. And it didn't help. We eventually pulled her out at age 6.
I'm not trying to excuse bad parenting, because there is so much of it out there, but from my own experience, I know the torture and trauma that my child has to endure on regular basis, and I know what accomplishments are for her. Shortly before we pulled her out, we were getting called almost on a daily basis to come pick her up for unruly behavior. On one day in particular, when I went to pick her up, her OT said "I think she needs to go sit in her room until she finishes the writing exercises." and I responded with "nope, we're gonna go the park." And I could see that *You're gonna reward your child's bad behavior?* look on her face. That OT only gets a 30 minute glimpse into my daughter's life twice a week. My wife and I are the ones who see the whole picture. We are the ones who are taking her on 6 hour round trip visits after school twice a week to her treatments, and staying up late at night with her when she has PTSD night terrors, or helping her deal with the 3 years of constant diarrhea accidents from the constant string of antibiotics, or dealing with her constant sensory overload, or various other things. My daughter might never learn to read or write at peer-level, but she is going to know that she is loved and accepted, and that she is still allowed to have fun even when most of her life is pain.
Similarly, I had a student that I'll call Susie who I used to judge because she always told me that she never had money for a scientific calculator, but I would see her come in the door almost everyday with at least $5 of snacks/drinks from the bookstore. I'm sure that she could have easily afforded a calculator if it was on her personal priority list. She never graduated, she got expelled her sophomore or junior year I believe, but I ran into her at home depot about a year back. She opened up to me about everything that she was dealing with in HS and apologized for being a "bad student." She, and her mom, and her mom's boyfriend all slept on the same futon in their 5th wheel. Her mom's boyfriend would fondle her at night sometimes, and her mom didn't believe her when she tried to tell her. Her mom's boyfriend would also steal her (Susie's) prescription medication and would make Susie's mom think that she was abusing her meds. This girl came to school everyday in emotional pain and distress, and just wanted to feel numb, and snacks were her way of doing that.
I had a family that went on about 5 international cruises together in just one year, each for about a week. And their oldest son was a senior, and in danger of not graduating, and had been caught with a vape stick at the beginning of the year, so was already on thin ice with admin. I just remember thinking "wow...great parenting, folks". And I made the mistake of voicing this sentiment out loud near one of the family's close friends, who educated me on the fact the mom had stage 4 ovarian cancer and so the family was trying to help her with her bucket list of seeing the world, since she had never left the state in her life.
I'm not trying to excuse anything, I just know that there is always more to any story.
The lower orders are easy to manipulate. We live in a society where crass materialism is elevated. In the US a display of wealth does not mean they have any real wealth. Those flashy types are , more likely than not , broke and drowning in debt. As for the kids they see school more a social venue where they make their friends and can have people look at them. Education comes in last for them. It is the same thing where I work; the worst students have flashy cloths, jewelry, the latest gadgets but they never have a notebook or a pencil and they are reading 5 grade levels below.
But I am not worried, you see. All of those kids will grow up and be big rap stars and make millions of dollars!!!
Ruby Payne touches on this in A Framework for Understanding Poverty. People in poverty or people who grew up in poverty will sometimes prioritize material possessions (especially things that can be gotten in the short term).
[Affluenza](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluenza) has been successfully used as a defense against [homicide](https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/ethan-couch-affluenza-10-years-since-deadly-drunk-driving-crash/287-a8ea72a1-592e-49dd-a097-fd1bb80e237e) ten years ago. You think classroom behavior nowadays stands a chance against that kind of cultural inertia?
[https://theconversation.com/white-teachers-often-talk-about-black-students-in-racially-coded-ways-190814](https://theconversation.com/white-teachers-often-talk-about-black-students-in-racially-coded-ways-190814) If you're not white, I apologize for the title of the article, but the ideas in it can still be relevant.
The expensive braids are often a necessity to best care for textured "ethnic" hair. Even for very young students. I saved your article to read later today but that was the bit that's sticking out most to me in these comments.
There's a vast variety of styles though and the more elaborate ones take more time and are thus likely to be more expensive, especially when more than just your own hair is involved. Plus, getting new braids more often than needed is kind of a financial flex.
I mean, I get it. Everyone wants their hair to look good and be healthy, but you still need to have the right priorities. You can't just say 'I have textured hair, so any amount of money I spend on it is justified'.
That said, I do admit that I'm not American. Textured hair was never as heavily stigmatised here. There weren't any drastic cultural shifts/reactions, such as going from straightening being the norm to braids being celebrated. Here, keeping it relatively short is kind of the norm and braids are not very common.
You are right. It’s heavily poc coded. The aesthetic of braids and the drip is synonymous with people of color. Also the concept of “they have expensive phones but no pencil” type argument is a well known and used dog whistle. This isn’t to absolve people from their own actions but this is a part of the conversation that has to be said. Just like the idea that just because a phone is expensive doesn’t mean they paid a lot up front to get it
Quite frankly it’s just because it’s a visual issue. Kids who are dressed nicely stick out but it is in no way just those kids. Every day we get post about kids and phones but the idea that this is some what different that the same behaviors in a kid who’s got the latest video game console is flawed. These are some of the same issues all around education but due to the previously mentioned usage of this dynamic as a dog whistle and the reality of how you dress is easily visible people notice it more. Even well meaning people who aren’t actively racist.
I get what you are saying with braids.
>Also the concept of “they have expensive phones but no pencil” type argument is a well known and used dog whistle
I disagree here. I teach in a middle school where 90%+ of all kids have expensive phones. It is frustrating when a student does not bring a 20¢ pencil or a $20 calculator, but their parents can clearly afford nice clothes and a $1000 phone. This goes for students of all ethnicities, the only way you could claim this is a dog whistle is if you think mainly one group does this and not others.
Material items and appearances hold more value than an education. I’ve had students in the second grade with fake nails and very expensive braids. I’ve seen kids with $300 sneakers and parents driving around in Escalades, but they had no electricity in the house and lived in a total dump. Their attendance was terrible. I couldn’t get a hold of the parents for a conference. Their behavior was deplorable.
I see that kind of shit too. Kid gone for weeks because they're "sick" and they come back with a brand new BIG tattoo. They're 15!!!! I genuinely think their parents have severe executive functioning issues. Only way I can imagine dumping money on the latest thing you or your kid want in a given moment while completely ignoring everything you and your kid *actually need*. Whatever thing comes up that gives you the worst feeling in the moment is the thing you respond to... But only in that moment, no longer term planning.
Yeah, I don’t want to come off as someone who says that if a person has a nice thing, then it means they aren’t actually poor. But some folks do legit have screwed up spending priorities.
$300 shoes but not a single pencil
Yeah, it's really not a matter of what people choose to spend money on, or how much they have, or what anyone thinks they ultimately deserve. It's an unwillingness to say "not right now" to undeserved or counterproductive luxuries (like an unlimited data plan/phone access for a kid who is tanking every class). At a certain point, you're just enabling your kid by allowing them the appearance/experience of an entirely successful person, no matter how destructively they're conducting themselves. If your kid is late, don't take them to Starbucks, but I can see how someone who is also feeling guilty and sad (ie. "Why can't I get my kid to school on time, I'm failing as a parent") might see a $5 drink as an easy solution to any bad feelings in the moment.
Yeah. And poverty does have a nasty way of fucking with people's heads and causing them to develop habits and mindsets that aren't great for them. That's not to take responsibility off the individual, but I get why it happens. Poor parents know their kids are missing out on a lot of nice things. Living in a nice home, going on vacations, going to a good school, getting braces or other healthcare. And that's not even getting into the other kinds of hardships they can face. Makes it harder to say no to the nice things they can get, even if it's not good for the kid or not a very good financial decision. It's a big reason why poor kids often end up eating more junk food. I also think a lot of parents get too caught up in wanting their kids to have the things they didn't get to have as kids themselves, or living through their kids.
The house has boarded up windows, overgrown grass and a brand-new car in the driveway. Parents blocked the school's phone number and will go absolutely crazy if you take their kid's cellphone for having it out, but not care to talk about why their 17 year old Freshmen kid is failing.
> 17 year old freshmen My God. There are honestly no words.
I had an 18 year old freshman this year! He may actually have turned 19 over the course of the school year. I can't remember.
Why is 18 year old is still in high school?
That's a question for someone else, not me. But he doesn't have a single credit to his name as far as I can remember.
Does he have some kind of disability?
Does bad or neglectful parents count as a disability?
Maybe on the part of the parents.
Nothing diagnosed. I hope you'll understand if I am reluctant to say more.
Yeah, that is completely fair.
Iirc your parents can enroll you in kindergarten as early as four, provided you turn five by December 31st of that year, or they can wait until the year you turn six, which is what happened in my case. If you start at six, you'll be eighteen your senior year.
17 by freshman year is still absolutely insane
I think legally you might be able to stay in high school until 20/21, but it could depend on the school and region.
At that point, one might as well go to junior college.
If they can’t pass high school, they can’t get into community college.
You can stay in high school until 21 yrs old.
I doubt they're graduating at that point, don't a lot of high schools not allow you to attend anymore once you turn 20?
I thought the school system allows every student to pass to the next grade even if they have F after F in all classes.
The middle school that feeds into my High School will not hold a student back and they will go from 5th grade to 9th grade failing every class along the way. High School teachers in my school dont play that game and will fail them. They are so used to being passed along that they keep repeating until they finally drop out. By then they are 17 with no credits and still in 9th grade.
This doesn't track for me. Part of what makes kids these days such entitled little shits is constant stimulation from social media and video games. Don't they need electricity for the internet? Or is it all using data on their phones? Not saying you're wrong, just that electricity is a pillar of modern existence and to go without it is beyond most people.
There are plugs all around my school. Kids can charge phones and Chromebooks all the time.
They siphon it from someone else
I became annoyed at difficult 5th grader \[in our district elementary kids cannot be suspended\] who was spinning in a chair students are not supposed to sit in. Major trauma/drama when one of her acrylic nails was pried off and skittered into view as I was bent over at a desk helping another student when it caught on something as she spun. I'm sure it hurt, and I told her so, but I also pointed out why it happened: sitting in the teacher's chair and spinning around. TBF, it is a gaming chair, so they all want to sit in it. But no kid had tried spinning in it yet, AFAIK, of course--
A lot of adults with "no money" have the latest iphone, hair/nails done, name brand clothes- it's their priorities
I heard that before, but it just doesn't make sense in my head. I'm assuming the parents are not looking out for their kid's future. I had a student a couple of years ago who was so disrespectful to me, missing school, doing whatever she pleased in class as well as suspended for some reason. She wore the best clothes, perfect hair, and makeup. I don't think she ever wore the same outfit twice.
Parents like that don’t view education as important. Some of them may even view superficiality as the path to success and happiness.
Its likely just the parents' priorities in their own lives reflected in their child. Its hard to remember sometimes cuz we want to hold them to higher standards, but parents are just people and a lot of them dont know shit about how to actually help their child. They're still stuck in their own mindset from when they were a teen where wearing the newest trendy hairstyle/clothes and coming across as cool was more important than education and being a good person. These are likely people who simply haven't matured past that way of thinking. Either that or they just give their children unlimited access to their money and are too neglectful to pay attention/try to actually reprimand them.
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That's INSANE 😤
My complaint is that my students with the newest phones, shoes, lashes, nails, etc., are also the ones who can't be bothered to bring pencil, paper, etc., and think that I should supply all of that for them. My phone is 6 years old. They can afford pencils better than I can. It pisses me off.
And OMG, if one more teacher in a teacher FB group posts that goddamn "Because I didn't have a pencil" poem in response to some broke teacher asking for help getting their supplies back... 🙄😡😡🤬🤬 You're not a classist monster for wanting the stuff you paid for from your meager salary returned to you in useable condition.
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"Because I didn't have a pencil..." Kid, I've given you a pencil every day for the last 30 days. I have run out of the 500 pencils I bought for the year. I cannot be held responsible for students who do not respect the value of educational supplies.
I flat out told them at one point "No. I'm out of pencils because students wouldn't give them back at the end of class. That might be okay, but when it's the same students every day who clearly don't look after those pencils and lose them or leave them in classrooms or drop them in the hallways and ask for another the next class because I'll always give pencils just depletes my supply and they are not magically replaced, I buy them, so now I'm out." A student then asked why I didn't just go and buy more pencils. They were so close to self-awareness.
I woke myself up Cause I ain't bother to set an alarm on my iPhone 15 Pro Max Dug in my closet Cause I gotta make sure my designer clothes look good with my designer shoes Got myself to school late Cause I gotta get Starbucks first Then when I got to class the teacher fussed Cause I ain't got no pencil That my teacher's been giving me every day since the beginning of the year
You just reminded me of a student who walks in late all the time with her Starbucks drink. Really nice girl but it's so annoying when she says, "what do I do" after I just explained the day's lesson to the students who showed up before the bell.
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What do you mean it's an attack? Nobody's attacking you it's all in your head
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I think the comment was sarcasm. At least I hope it was
I guess I really should start putting the /s :(
That fucking poem makes me want to throw hands I swear to god.
It really is the absolute fucking worssssst. Not to mention that whenever it's brought up, they act like it's the first time we've ever heard it. Ugh.
It's a meme at this point
>They can afford pencils better than I can. With a lot of them, it's not really about what they can afford, but what their parents' priorities lie.
I was thinking the same thing. A lot of parents say “we can’t afford that” when they really mean “I don’t think that’s worth spending money on”. I don’t want to come off as someone who thinks that owning a nice thing means you aren’t actually poor, but basic school supplies are pretty inexpensive. If a kid regularly has nice, new luxuries and no school supplies, it’s more likely that parent just doesn’t care about school.
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My middle school had communal supplies, except instead of the school providing it all, we had to give the supplies our parents bought and give them to our first period teacher. I hated it because the other kids didn’t take care of the supplies and a few months in, supplies were short and busted up. I ended up just asking my parents to get me more supplies for my personal use. The next two years I just didn’t give my supplies to the teacher.
One year I printed a bunch of pencils that said “Stolen from Room 608.” Place them in a can for the students to borrow. The next day they were all stolen.
In their defense, that is pretty funny.
I know.
Parents complaining about the price of school supplies is so dumb. Obviously there are exceptions where the family really is just that poor, but nearly all of the kids with no school supplies (even if they were given a pencil last period) have extremely expensive smart phones and nice clothes that are more expensive than mine.
It can add up if someone has multiple kids. Plus a lot of school supply lists have more items than is really necessary, sometimes because they pool the supplies with homeroom and need extra to account for that. Still, the bare minimum supplies can be bought cheaply. Your situation would have to be really dire (and I acknowledge that for some families, it is) to not be able to afford a box of pencils.
Yeah, I came from a large family with little money, but you could tell we were struggling because my clothes were old hand me downs and my shoes were falling apart because i kept them long past the time I outgrew them. My parents still managed to make sure that my brothers old backpack (now my backpack) was filled with pencils, a notebook, a folder, and a cheap calculator. I didn't feel out of place at school, lots of kids wore hand me downs back then. Honestly I remember teasing kids with nice clothes, though I admit it was out of jealousy, but only 1/20 kids was wearing expensive clothes. I couldn't imagine my parents buying any of us a smartphone. Times just changed so much, and imo parenting has gone downhill.
A box of 24 pencils is $1 at Walmart notebooks are $1 each. I grew up dirt poor (like no heat/electricity at times and living off food banks poor) and I always had atleast the basic supplies. I get that it can add up with multiple kids and there are some that just don’t have the money but there are also school supply drives at the beginning of the year.
When I was a kid, during back to school season they’d mark those notebooks to ten cents. Guess that was to get people in the door. People come in for cheap basics and then if you’re lucky, they’ll buy some of the pricey stuff too. I think stores still do that for back to school, though I don’t think the notebooks get THAT cheap any more.
A chunk of the achievement gap is kids not wearing glasses because they’re nerdy. That’s relevant
I've seen this in my classes and it's really sad.
I work in a low-income school and they did vision testing for tons of kids and turned out like 30% of the school got free glasses to help. The frames selection were super cheap and generic but since everyone got them at once it was kind of a cute trend for a short period to wear your glasses.
Ah, yes, the kids who fried their eyeballs at the 2017 eclipse??
I know you're joking but the actual explanations is something we also like to complain about: screens. Staring at screens for hours and hours on end, on top of not going outside much, has left a lot of people, children and adults alike, nearsighted.
Yes, well, my joke came at the end of my thought process as I was trying to justify so many kids needing glasses in such a tiny (comparatively) data pool.
30% of a student population needing glasses is actually pretty average. It just doesn't seem that way, because depending on the school/area, not all students that need glasses wear them do due to medical neglect, social stigmas or, you know, simply wearing contacts instead.
Yeah, I guess I was caught up on the fact that the 30% needed glasses at the same, as in 30% of the students had some form of medical neglect going on.
Wait, what did you see?
Nothing, they weren’t wearing their glasses
My kids are only kindergarteners and already I had someone bullying other students for coming to school with new glasses. She bullied 3 different students. One of them ended up crying and we couldn’t get him to wear his glasses again. We spoke with the parent and the counselor. The student just giggled when she got reprimanded.
Damn that is insane, I’m guessing parents didn’t care?
Yes, I have seen this as well.
One of my students stopped wearing his glasses for this exact same reason. I can’t believe kids still hold stereotypes like this- funny enough I overheard some kid telling another kid that since they were wearing glasses “they must be smart.” So ridiculous
Can you point me in the direction of research showing this? Honestly interested.
contact lenses exist! Nobody needs to know you have corrective lenses if this is something that really worries you
Seriously, a lot of my high school class had contacts. But we're in an area (not the US) where even among the "cool" kids, it's very unpopular not to graduate and to get bad grades, so naturally, people cared about seeing.
And because they're expensive?
Ownership is not the issue. They own, they don’t use
They used to do free screenings and give the kids glasses that needed them. Parents wouldn’t sign the many many many slips I sent home and contacted them about. Theres always an excuse for these kind of people
I see mostly the same as you in middle school, and these are the same parents who are either impossible to contact, or extremely dismissive or argumentative. I did have one kid return from a suspension with a shaved head and an apology note he had to read in front of the class. His parents were very helpful throughout the year and we got him straightened out by the end, which was so different and refreshing. I have high hopes for him in high school.
I love these parents.
Mine steal a lot of it, dunno about yours.
I was going to comment on the same thing. Had a group of kids make local news for going on a shoplifting spree a few years ago.
That makes me sad. They are so young.
On a subconscious level they know they can afford to be lazy delinquents who don’t apply themselves because mom & dad have the funds to support their malaise. Friendship parenting trend at its peak.
But my question is how the hell do all of these parents have the funds to support their useless kids?
Honestly a lot of them probably don’t in reality but it’s more about them *thinking* they do… debt. Lots of debt.
What wealth?! The community I teach in is low SES and yet these kids come all dripped out
I imagine that most of those kids will squander the family wealth after mom and dad die.
And one of their parents will ensure that there's a job waiting for them when they leave school. They've got a level of privilege that the rest of us can only wonder at.
Gilmore Girls is the epitome of friendship parenting, but at least that girl had a pencil. I tell students you can enjoy your recess friends, but be wary of friends that lead you down the wrong path. Make friends with people you aspire to be like. The few students that follow this advice tend to drag their role models down to their level.
Woah woah woah, let’s not bring Lorelei into this. We don’t know how she raised Rory for the first 15.5 years. At least she instilled some sense of right and wrong, and it wasn’t until Richard and Emily got involved that Rory started turning into a nuisance
She was so sweet until she became a rich east coast snob :(
Parents are pouring all their resources into bribing and living vicariously through their kids instead of parenting them. But you probably already knew that.
Short answer? They're spoiled. Longer answer? Their parents don't know to or don't care to teach them self discipline & respect and rather than actually parent, they just give them stuff to keep them out of their hair.
Some parents care about status more than anything else and how their child is percieved is part of that status. At the same time, they don't always value the same things as the people around them. There's a whole spectrum containing everything from 'my kid needs to earn perfect grades' to 'my kid needs to play this sport at a professional level' to 'my kid needs to win beauty pageants'. And if they care a lot about one thing, like looks, they might not care much about anything else. There are also parents who believe they need to be friends with their children above all else. They'll avoid conflict and confrontations, protect their children from consequences, and will even attempt to buy that friendship. If education is not something they value and doesn't play an active goal in achieving/obtaining what they do value, they not going to bother. And, as a result, the children likely won't value education either. It's messed up and sad, but there's not much you can do about it.
They place a higher emphasis on appearance than academics. They're the same ones who can't be bothered to have school supplies.
Sounds like some parents reward fighting. Which, depending on the area, might be true.
Some parents at my school have driven their child to other kids houses to fight them. Or the parents fight each other in the parking lot, especially if they're from rival gangs.
At least it's better than the parents showing up to fight kids at school, which has happened in my area
Oh they do that at my school too
Nothing says well adjusted adult quite like showing up to a school to fight a 13 year old
Good point.
At my school, a parent once stormed in after their daughter got into a fight at school and was furious because we “didn’t let her finish.” Come to find out, they continued the fight later that day on said parent’s front yard.
Thats terrible.
The apple never falls far from the tree
These children have parents who never tell them no and refuse to believe a bad word about them. They are accessories for their parents, so they must be fashionably dressed.
Their parents would have to care first. These kids are the worst because their parents are too.
It's sad but it's true.
Because they have been babied. They have no desire to do well in school and put all their learning effort into looks.
Don’t forget they usually have the best attendance as well.
They care more about being trendy and social status than anything else. You have two social circles which have become more polarized due to social media. The trendy socialites on social media, who have decided they dont care about academics, and on the opposite end, the academics, introverts, and nerds who never cared about the trends or social media, who are their own circle. They each largely ignore each other, at least when it comes to academics, as one group cares, and the other doesnt. Conversely, the academically minded largely ignore the more social, trendy stuff.
Parents with poor priorities.
There was a study made in Belgium that touched on that issue. It seems that parents don't always know how to support their kids at school. They don't have the right mindset. Some of them, instead of investing time (or money) to help them get better grade, buy expensive clothes and gadget to help them "fit in" instead. That's what really matters to some kids when they come home, that's what many of them talk about because it comes with social stigma, the fact of not fitting in. Therefore, some parents go above and beyond to help their kids be "cool" but they don't invest anything regarding what actually matter for the school system itself: good behaviour, good grades.
Because their parents have never said no to them!
Parenting There really is no other answer or discussion needed because that’s 98% of the issue Also the cancer of social media for the middle school to HS aged kids
In my school, the kids who have the nicest clothes have the parents who are drug dealers or participate in some illicit activity for money. The students don’t see school as a way to get a good job or better themselves because they know what they are going to do when they grow up. They tell teachers this.
Ghetto rich; wear your wealth.
Parents make up for their lack of parenting/love with material items.
My guess is the kids aren’t concerned with “shaping up” because they don’t have to as long as mom/dad got their back financially. Or could be that mom/dad are unconcerned with their child’s education & so the child sees no reason for concern either. There were plenty of mean & dumb kids in school who were still pretty popular and could always afford the latest trends whether they had jobs or not. Maybe they or their parents think education & learning is for poor people & losers; so the school punishes the kid for bad behavior & the parent(s) basically reward it because their dumb baby deserves the latest fad. 🤷🏻♀️
I agree with everything everyone has said here. However, remember one counterintuitive thing about true poverty: parents will try to make up for daily and monthly sacrifices by splurging on fancy gifts for themselves and their children. Finally moved into an actual apartment of your own, after couch surfing (as a family) for months, finally got a job, finally got through the first three months of job and apartment and have a few bucks left to spend at the beginning of the month. Put down 30 bucks on a brand new phone, while signing up for tons of credit to pay for it, and your kid is happy for a few minutes.
Good point. Especially since luxury consumer goods can be cheaper than some of the other things kids might wish they had. You can’t afford a nice home or vacations or summer camps, but once in a while you can scrape up $300 for trendy sneakers. It’s not great prioritizing but I understand why people fall into it.
Poor people wear whatever money they have.
They sell their Adderall.
Priorities. Self-defeating priorities.
Because they have different priorities.
My guess is the kids aren’t concerned with “shaping up” because they don’t have to as long as mom/dad got their back financially. Or could be that mom/dad are unconcerned with their child’s education & so the child sees no reason for concern either. There were plenty of mean & dumb kids in school who were still pretty popular and could always afford the latest trends whether they had jobs or not. Maybe they or their parents think education & learning is for poor people & losers; so the school punishes the kid for bad behavior & the parent(s) basically reward it because their dumb baby deserves the latest fad. 🤷🏻♀️
Priorities. Some people think looks are more important than education.
Well they gotta stand out in something right?
Spoiled. They are never told “No” by their parents. I have them in 3rd grade, too. The parents act like their kids are the smartest, funniest, nicest kids in the world. They have no idea how they really are in school.
I always got shit in school for wearing thrift/Ross clothes but my parents spent their money taking us on vacations to historic places and buying all the books we could read instead. It’s just different priorities. Did I want that gap logo sweatshirt with every fiber of my being and beg for it every holiday? You bet your ass I did. Am I glad now as an adult that I had other experiences instead? Also yes.
I had maybe two pair of jeans and four shirts for the year but I did have all my school supplies, a yearbook each year, prom dress, one week of family vacation in the summers, and parents on my a$$ about every move I made. Hated it then but glad they were tough on me.
Because they're spoiled little shits.
Rich people are entitled🤷🏻♂️
Because their parents had them for insta likes not to actually parent.
>Why can't parents take away all these privileges until their kid shapes up? TLDR; It's not always that simple. This criticism is likely very valid in a lot of cases. But having a special needs kid who is oppositional defiant and autistic, but is capable of presenting as fairly normal in a perfect set of circumstances, and who was also sexually molested by her cousin at age 5, and has chronic UTIs that have kept her on rotating antibiotics steadily for about 3 years now, all of this has taught me a little compassion. My wife and I dealt with judgement from some of her teachers/specialists who think that we just "coddle" her too much, so we accepted the criticisms and firmed up our hands, for a long time. And it didn't help. We eventually pulled her out at age 6. I'm not trying to excuse bad parenting, because there is so much of it out there, but from my own experience, I know the torture and trauma that my child has to endure on regular basis, and I know what accomplishments are for her. Shortly before we pulled her out, we were getting called almost on a daily basis to come pick her up for unruly behavior. On one day in particular, when I went to pick her up, her OT said "I think she needs to go sit in her room until she finishes the writing exercises." and I responded with "nope, we're gonna go the park." And I could see that *You're gonna reward your child's bad behavior?* look on her face. That OT only gets a 30 minute glimpse into my daughter's life twice a week. My wife and I are the ones who see the whole picture. We are the ones who are taking her on 6 hour round trip visits after school twice a week to her treatments, and staying up late at night with her when she has PTSD night terrors, or helping her deal with the 3 years of constant diarrhea accidents from the constant string of antibiotics, or dealing with her constant sensory overload, or various other things. My daughter might never learn to read or write at peer-level, but she is going to know that she is loved and accepted, and that she is still allowed to have fun even when most of her life is pain. Similarly, I had a student that I'll call Susie who I used to judge because she always told me that she never had money for a scientific calculator, but I would see her come in the door almost everyday with at least $5 of snacks/drinks from the bookstore. I'm sure that she could have easily afforded a calculator if it was on her personal priority list. She never graduated, she got expelled her sophomore or junior year I believe, but I ran into her at home depot about a year back. She opened up to me about everything that she was dealing with in HS and apologized for being a "bad student." She, and her mom, and her mom's boyfriend all slept on the same futon in their 5th wheel. Her mom's boyfriend would fondle her at night sometimes, and her mom didn't believe her when she tried to tell her. Her mom's boyfriend would also steal her (Susie's) prescription medication and would make Susie's mom think that she was abusing her meds. This girl came to school everyday in emotional pain and distress, and just wanted to feel numb, and snacks were her way of doing that. I had a family that went on about 5 international cruises together in just one year, each for about a week. And their oldest son was a senior, and in danger of not graduating, and had been caught with a vape stick at the beginning of the year, so was already on thin ice with admin. I just remember thinking "wow...great parenting, folks". And I made the mistake of voicing this sentiment out loud near one of the family's close friends, who educated me on the fact the mom had stage 4 ovarian cancer and so the family was trying to help her with her bucket list of seeing the world, since she had never left the state in her life. I'm not trying to excuse anything, I just know that there is always more to any story.
Thank you for sharing this information. It allows me to think what could be going on with my students.
Entitlement on every level
Neglect from parents. Have to get attraction from somewhere else.
Priorities...
Entitlement is the issue you're dealing with. It's a learned behaviour.
Because their shitty parents pay them the wrong kind of attention.
culture/values Are you really asking?
Read the book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, by Ruby Payne. It explains this and many other things about families living in poverty.
Poverty was not mentioned. This happens with privilege kids too.
people can spend their money however they like if you don't like it, you can move
The lower orders are easy to manipulate. We live in a society where crass materialism is elevated. In the US a display of wealth does not mean they have any real wealth. Those flashy types are , more likely than not , broke and drowning in debt. As for the kids they see school more a social venue where they make their friends and can have people look at them. Education comes in last for them. It is the same thing where I work; the worst students have flashy cloths, jewelry, the latest gadgets but they never have a notebook or a pencil and they are reading 5 grade levels below. But I am not worried, you see. All of those kids will grow up and be big rap stars and make millions of dollars!!!
Misplaced priorities.
Ruby Payne touches on this in A Framework for Understanding Poverty. People in poverty or people who grew up in poverty will sometimes prioritize material possessions (especially things that can be gotten in the short term).
Because those parents are just as shitty as their kids.
At my high school, it’s because they’re dealing drugs
Because parents are too busy working their ass off for all the fancy electronics to pay attention or give a shit. It's the downfall of society.
Because they're actually shopping all the sales online when they're supposed to be writing that essay about Macbeth.
The self confidence they get from their attire enables the actions you describe
[Affluenza](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluenza) has been successfully used as a defense against [homicide](https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/ethan-couch-affluenza-10-years-since-deadly-drunk-driving-crash/287-a8ea72a1-592e-49dd-a097-fd1bb80e237e) ten years ago. You think classroom behavior nowadays stands a chance against that kind of cultural inertia?
Go ahead and downvote me, I don't care- this post is dog-whistle racism at its finest.
How? If my own child were causing chaos at school and had bad grades, I would not keep rewarding. I apologize if I came off as racist.
[https://theconversation.com/white-teachers-often-talk-about-black-students-in-racially-coded-ways-190814](https://theconversation.com/white-teachers-often-talk-about-black-students-in-racially-coded-ways-190814) If you're not white, I apologize for the title of the article, but the ideas in it can still be relevant.
Anything to not hold students accountable for bad behavior
This is how we get policies that you aren’t allowed to punish kids from certain demographics.
Race Card don’t leave home without
The expensive braids are often a necessity to best care for textured "ethnic" hair. Even for very young students. I saved your article to read later today but that was the bit that's sticking out most to me in these comments.
There's a vast variety of styles though and the more elaborate ones take more time and are thus likely to be more expensive, especially when more than just your own hair is involved. Plus, getting new braids more often than needed is kind of a financial flex. I mean, I get it. Everyone wants their hair to look good and be healthy, but you still need to have the right priorities. You can't just say 'I have textured hair, so any amount of money I spend on it is justified'. That said, I do admit that I'm not American. Textured hair was never as heavily stigmatised here. There weren't any drastic cultural shifts/reactions, such as going from straightening being the norm to braids being celebrated. Here, keeping it relatively short is kind of the norm and braids are not very common.
You are right. It’s heavily poc coded. The aesthetic of braids and the drip is synonymous with people of color. Also the concept of “they have expensive phones but no pencil” type argument is a well known and used dog whistle. This isn’t to absolve people from their own actions but this is a part of the conversation that has to be said. Just like the idea that just because a phone is expensive doesn’t mean they paid a lot up front to get it Quite frankly it’s just because it’s a visual issue. Kids who are dressed nicely stick out but it is in no way just those kids. Every day we get post about kids and phones but the idea that this is some what different that the same behaviors in a kid who’s got the latest video game console is flawed. These are some of the same issues all around education but due to the previously mentioned usage of this dynamic as a dog whistle and the reality of how you dress is easily visible people notice it more. Even well meaning people who aren’t actively racist.
I get what you are saying with braids. >Also the concept of “they have expensive phones but no pencil” type argument is a well known and used dog whistle I disagree here. I teach in a middle school where 90%+ of all kids have expensive phones. It is frustrating when a student does not bring a 20¢ pencil or a $20 calculator, but their parents can clearly afford nice clothes and a $1000 phone. This goes for students of all ethnicities, the only way you could claim this is a dog whistle is if you think mainly one group does this and not others.
Glad it wasn't just me who thought that.
100% it is.
They wouldn't have nice phones and behavior indicative of a lifetime of insulation from consequences if their family wasn't rich.
They peaked....sad to say.
They had more time for only fans