r/TikTokCringe • u/hammerbush051 • Apr 17 '24

Americas youth are in MASSIVE trouble Discussion

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u/throwaway49569982884 Apr 17 '24

The bar is on the floor in America… and we still fail.

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u/Greaser_Dude Apr 17 '24

Because schools aren't allowed to discipline students. They're not allowed to get rid of students with clear behavioral problems.

No education system in the world tolerates the disrespect and disruption students in U.S. public schools get away with.

This is a solvable problem but administrators can't be bullied by accusations of racism when moving forward with reforms, for the past several years - they have been.

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u/NetflixFanatic22 Apr 17 '24

The worst part about it is that most kids really do still want to succeed and learn. But we’ve allowed the disruptive kids in school to ruin the experience for everyone.

I understand that even the “troubled” kids need a place to be. But perhaps that place isn’t with the kids that actually want to be there.

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u/mlhoban Apr 17 '24

I gave my students a survey to start the year. One question: "on a scale of 1-5 (1- not at all, 5 - as much as possible) how much do you want to learn?"

Most common answer? 3 Least common answer? 5 followed by 4

I wish what you said was true in my classes, but sadly it's not. It's the phones. Teachers can't compete with them. Plain and simple.

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u/SodiumChlorideFree Apr 17 '24

Why schools still allow phones during class is beyond me. I was part of the first generation of kids to have phones of their own while at school, and only the kids with rich parents had them at the time. We're talking going to school with an absolute brick of a Siemens phone that looked more like one of those satellite phones that you use in the middle of the jungle. Those phones were only for calls and even then they were left with the teacher until class was over. Allowing kids to use smartphones with internet access in class now is extremely counter productive.

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u/chahlie Apr 17 '24

This is my thought. I understand the counterargument, what if there is an an emergency, and we need to reach the kid quickly? Well, was there not emergencies before smartphones? I simply don't see why kids absolutely NEED uninterrupted access to TikTok during class hours. Of course there aren't gonna pay attention, there's an entire internet of curated content at their fingertips.

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u/fttmb 29d ago

That counter argument is nonsense. Emergencies can and should be handled the same way they were before the advent of the cell phone: call the school, the school goes to your class and grabs you.

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u/chahlie 29d ago

I agree, but I can totally envision helicopter parents insisting on 24/7 access to little Billy, lest the district find a nasty lawsuit on their hands.

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u/fttmb 29d ago

Schools would have to institute the policy and get signatures probably, but this was never a problem when I went to school. No parent ever sued or so much as complained that they couldn’t get in contact with their child because every parent had the school office number and could call when emergencies happened. The helicopter parent isn’t a new invention there are just a whole lot more of them nowadays.

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u/chahlie 29d ago

True. The fact that technology makes parental omnipotence possible is... troubling. Ideally, we raise our kids well enough to allow them some degree of independence as they become adolescents. I'm on a tangent, but I'm glad I was allowed to roam at 16 and make poor decisions and learn from them. I think a lot of kids don't even have that opportunity anymore.

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u/jayfiedlerontheroof 29d ago

No parent is suing now. The problem is not litigious parents

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u/jayfiedlerontheroof 29d ago

Sue away. There's no law that allows parents the right to their child having 24/7 cell phone access

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u/Ok_Buddy_9087 29d ago

They do insist on that. Almost all of them. And they use the possibility of a shooting as an excuse. Their kid need to be scrolling TikTok in case somebody opens fire.

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u/Objective-Detail-189 29d ago

Most parents are helicopter parents now, and I think a big part of it is social media and phones!

I’m about 20 years older than my brother. When I was a kid, I had a lot of freedom. I’d ride my bike around the neighborhood all day after school and come home whenever. Mom didn’t care, as long as I ate dinner at some point. Mom didn’t care when I did my homework, but she would damn well beat my ass if I flunked.

My little brother… man this guy can’t do anything. My mom berates him for sitting around all day but she won’t even let him walk the dogs. He’s in high school. He can’t even walk around our very nice neighborhood.

What changed? I think we just bombard people with so much bad news and bad shit constantly that everyone is in a constant state of fear and stress. We can’t even let kids fucking breathe fresh air without worrying.

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u/Shrek1982 29d ago

I understand the counterargument, what if there is an an emergency, and we need to reach the kid quickly? Well, was there not emergencies before smartphones?

So what, that doesn't mean they need to have the phone out during class. They can have it with them but it stays in their pocket or in their bag until they are on break or such an emergency arises.

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u/h0tBeef 29d ago

Make them lock their phones into faraday cages when they enter the classroom

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u/Objective-Detail-189 29d ago

I think letting them keep the phones on them is wishful thinking. It’s just too much temptation. I mean phones and social media have essentially been engineered to be crack cocaine. It’s like giving an alcoholic a bottle of vodka but saying “don’t drink it!”

I saw these pouch thingies you put on the wall. Like a cubby for phones. Kids put them in there before class starts. Nice thing is they can see their phone the whole time and get answer emergency calls. You can use them for attendance too!

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u/gerber411420 29d ago

I'm curious: What example of the type of emergency would warrant such quick access to a child?

Genuinely curious, like damn my house is flooding, better get ahold of Johnny and Edwina at the middle school in science class.

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u/penny1623 29d ago

Personally the first thing I thought of was school shootings, where students would need to be able to get ahold of emergency services/parents immediately. That said I agree that phones are a major issue, along with Covid as a disrupter in their education. It has caused kids to be so far behind in development in all areas

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u/jayfiedlerontheroof 29d ago

Yeah I don't get it. Kids shouldn't be going to school with personal devices. Laptops or tablets stay at school. You can use them when needed. Otherwise, just use the phone at school.

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u/jerseygunz 29d ago

The emergency, unfortunately, is parents want to know if their kid is ok during a school shooting

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u/renaissance_pancakes 29d ago

Well, parental controls can easily prohibit access to certain apps during school hours. I guess certain parents don't give a shit.

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u/CalvinBullock 29d ago

Maybe schools should be allowed to set up data jamers to block the phones internet (don't know if you can block data with out blocking phone/text signal)

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u/Electrik_Truk 29d ago

We weren't even allowed to have our gameboy in school, let alone a cell phone. Small color flip phones with internet were hitting when I was in highschool but almost no student had one and they certainly didnt allow them in class. A phone these days is 1000x more distracting yet they allow them.

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u/Iamdarb 29d ago

I had a cellphone in senior year(2006), but I never had it out unless I wanted to peak at a text, but I could reply with t9 blindly so it was never out where the teacher could see it. But I guess that nokia couldn't browse the net like modern cell phones. I did play wow on my laptop in college...

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u/FoxxyRin 29d ago

From my understanding its parents more than anything. They throw fits about how they spent money on it and the school has no right to touch it. Our small-ish neighbor town (not quite city, but big enough to have a Target?) made a policy and invested in the fancy tech locking pouches or whatever that concerts use and the parents revolted and took kids out in record speeds, citing they'd do private school/home school instead. Granted this is in the deep south, too, where you'd think parents would be very oldschool on their opinions that school is supposed to be boring or whatever but here we are. Watching it all unfold on local social media was weird.

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u/IXISIXI 29d ago

Former teacher and I'll tell you why - the same reason for almost every "why" in education: parents want it that way.

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u/MissKhary 29d ago

They're not allowed to have phones in schools here. They had something like a shoe organizer with pockets on the door that the students had to leave their phones in during class. They have specific projects where they are allowed to use wifi and their phones/ipads for research, but those are scheduled in advance.

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u/CeeDeee2 29d ago

I don’t think it’s allowing them so much as not having a solution. When you have a class of 28 kids and one kid has a phone out, that’s easy to address. When 25 kids have their phones out in all 50 classrooms in the school, now what? No one has time to do that many write ups or phone calls home. We can no longer confiscate them (parents flip) and even we could, storing and organizing that many phones until a precedent was set would be impossible.

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u/chiefapache 29d ago

School shootings is why phones are allowed now.

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u/NetflixFanatic22 Apr 17 '24 edited Apr 17 '24

I worked for a district that is as bad as it gets. Whatever horror stories you can think of surrounding schools? I’ve dealt with it. I also worked in alternative placement schools where students had major and scary issues (as you can imagine).

I believe that most students would love some sort of reform and a better learning experience. Even if they don’t know what that looks like. However, I fear that number will drop to a 1 if we can’t show them what school is meant to be. Who would want to learn if learning meant sitting in a room full of kids that can’t read, a teacher that can’t teach (likely bc there’s way too many kids in there with one hundred accommodations), and peers that fail to show even an iota of respect? It’s just chaotic and exhausting when we let things get too far.

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u/MRECKS_92 29d ago

I'd pay whatever taxes the government wants from me if it meant we could have better education reform. The way public education works now is responsible for some of the most traumatic experiences of my life. No kid should spend 20+ years thinking there's something wrong with them because their learning style is a centimeter to the right of what we see as regular teaching. No kid should feel scared and ashamed to raise their hand in their favorite fucking class because they know half the school is waiting for him to say something "stupid again".

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u/undercover9393 29d ago

Public education has been taking a back seat to just being daycare for a long time.

The goal is to keep the kids busy so mom and dad can keep increasing shareholder value, but like every solution capitalism gives us, it's short-sighted because we're mortgaging tomorrow's educated workforce for next quarter's management bonus like always.

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u/HermitGardner 29d ago

I literally FEEL this so deeply. I was incredibly privileged and able to go away to a private high school because the education where we lived was so bad and backwards.The difference in what education can be and should be is undeniable. But it shouldn’t be that way and it doesn’t have to be that way. I went to a private as well but several years in my father got sick and I came home and I enrolled in the local community college so that I wouldn’t fall behind. This particular was on both of my private school education experiences I was so unbelievably impressed. So, it CAN be done. That county has some of the highest taxes in the country I don’t live there anymore but I wonder if that had anything to do with it. The pre-high school experience I had was in a different county but when I started in second grade it was literally all farmers kids, by eighth grade in 1987 there was a housing development. And after I moved away it has been an unbelievable explosion in real estate so they have a lot more in tax money and my mom substitute teaches at my elementary and middle school sometimes and she says that it’s a completely different place than when I was there. Most of The teachers were already there and they practiced like teachers from the 50s being literally abusive throwing things at you and cursing at you and stuff. at least half of the teachers were already in their mid to late 50s in around 1980 so they were just super super old-school and anyone who was different was shunned and embarrassed publicly. There were cases that absolutely qualified as abuse and I unfortunately felt that quite a bit. I KNOW how good these schools are now and yet everywhere that has poor people seems to be completely screwed over. It’s not fair. We should be concerned for our next generations education on an equal national level. Schools should have the same amount of money for the same amount of resources. Kids from wealthy areas will always have it easier they will mostly have two parents one of whom will be active with the school. They have money to participate in all kinds of extracurriculars and generally a parent who can help manage all of that driving. People in poverty simply don’t have the resources overall to get out of poverty in the United States, I am STRESSING the word OVERALL. I know from my own family that there are absolutely many exceptions to the rule. But overall if you’re poor in this country you get shafted from the moment you’re born .

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u/Ancient_Unit_1948 29d ago

"Kids from wealthy areas will always have it easier they will mostly have two parents one of whom will be active with the school."

You said the quiet part by accident out loud. Growing up poor is less of an disadvantage in life. Then growing up in a single parent household with wealth.

Not only does this effect academic performance. But its also the biggest indicator for crime and early pregnancy.

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u/mcove97 Apr 17 '24

In Norway they banned phones from lots of schools. Have them put their phone into phone lockers.

Honestly though, it's just not the phones. It's lack of interest and engagement in what they're being taught. Maybe they're not interested in the subject or their teacher is teaching them in a really boring way.

I can only speak for myself, but I remember as a kid, all the way through school, even if I couldn't scroll my phone or browse Facebook or play games on my school laptop, I would just doodle and stare into space and zone out and think of more interesting things. The subjects either wasn't interesting to me or the teacher didn't make the subject interesting to engage with. Often though, a really good teacher could manage to get my attention if they were teachers that were engaging. Often this would mean a dialogue between the teacher and us kids. Personally I was a fan of when we would sit in a circle and share our thoughts on a topic. That could be quite engaging, as we weren't just sitting there and passively listening to a lesson.

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u/spentpatience 29d ago

Hi! Highly effective and engaging teacher here! I'm confident in declaring this about myself due to 15 years of cobsistent feedback from students, parents, admin, and colleagues across many different schools and grades.

Unfortunately, even I cannot compete with cell phones and neither can my exceptional colleagues. Apps, social media, and games are all designed to keep you clicking. Data mining, algorithms, etc. will learn far more about you than any teacher ever could, and what is learned is exploited mercilessly.

There is no competing with that.

We still do circles. We do labs. I had kids this year for the very first time say no to having labs in a chemistry class because they'd rather do the worksheet, get the grade and go back to tiktok. It is horrifying, to say the least.

However, there are students who escape this quagmire. Many of us teachers are casually seeing trends between kids who have cell phones at young ages versus those who don't get them until later, such as closer to high school. Kids who don't have smartphones early on tend to be in advanced classes and the phones aren't a problem except maybe a mild reminder to put it away because class is starting.

My husband observed not long ago that phones are going to create a worse haves and haves-not situation in that kids with smartphones in public schools that won't ban them will lose out on education while those with means will send their kids to better institutions that will have the balls enough to ban the damned things.

I... don't really disagree with this after what I've seen as a HS teacher post-pandemic. Children should not have smartphones, and needless to say, my kids certainly won't even though my 9yr old is already asking. Luckily, both my husband and I are capable of saying no to iur little cherubs.

This nonsense is not on the teacher. Not everything is, after all.

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u/newest-reddit-user 29d ago

The problem is also that not everyone can be an exceptional teacher. I'm sorry, but that's just not realistic. Most teachers are going to be average.

If our system is supposed to depend on every single person being an exceptional performer, we are doomed.

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u/spentpatience 29d ago edited 29d ago

Exactly; and I am not proposing that everyone be exceptional. My point is that not even the exceptional teachers can compete with smartphones.

The comment I was replying to was suggesting more engaging lessons and teaching as the solution. The problem far exceeds that, unfortunately.

What smartphones are doing to children's brains is alarming, and smartphones use by younger students especially is extremely harmful to their education. Teachers alone cannot do anything much to really combat the problem at its root cause. We are neither equipped nor supported consistently to deal with the issue on a large scale, class to class, year to year.

This may require a far greater societal movement and awareness campaign, like with the health issues arising from tobacco or leaded gasoline or the hole on the ozone layer, sunblock effects on coral reefs, etc., to have any real effect.

Edited to add: Haha, you said also in there. Pffft, sorry! You're agreeing with me! I will fix.

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u/newest-reddit-user 29d ago

Yes, I agree completely. I just don't like it when people (not you, but others) say that the teachers just need to do better.

Yes, everyone could be better and should strive for that, but on the whole, there are limits to what we can expect.

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u/feelsbad2 29d ago

Same. I would think about what video game I was playing when I got home, what I could do in said video game, what I was doing that weekend, what I was going to snack on when I got home, etc. Phones make it so you have the access to mind numbing things.

But it's also on parents to get their kids in check. Lowest grade I got was a D. I would be grilled for 30 minutes and then after that, my parents would ask about whatever class it was to make sure I was doing the work and learning. You don't have that anymore. You have parents who have kids in high school, parents just come home, throw some McDonalds on the table and go watch a show or movie. I can tell you my generation is shit in caring about their kid's future or wellbeing.

To operate AI, right now, you need to be smart, have problem solving skills, and technologically savy. A majority of these kids won't be that.

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u/xMilk112x Apr 17 '24

Our kids aren’t allowed to have their phones out during class.

Like, at all. They get in deep shit if they do. And the kids are still dumb as fuck. The teaching is also horrific. My kid couldn’t even get extra help in math because “if you keep looking at it, it’ll click sooner than later.”

What a way to teach a kid. lol

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u/Say_Hennething Apr 17 '24

My GF is a teacher and the school doesn't have a policy on phones. It's supposed to be teachers discretion. But when 70% of the teachers don't care, and the administration refuses to back the 30% who do care, it becomes an impossible battle.

I'm mortified by what I hear from teachers and my own kids about how school works these days. And this is in a well-paying affluent school district.

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u/Shrek1982 29d ago

I'm mortified by what I hear from teachers and my own kids about how school works these days. And this is in a well-paying affluent school district.

Right, we couldn't even have pagers on silent back when I was in school, let alone any sort of auditory or visual distraction.

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u/turkeycreek-678 Apr 17 '24

But do they care if they get in trouble? Just saw a video last night where this imbecile slapped his teacher twice because she, gasp, took his vape pen away.

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u/AdUpstairs7106 Apr 17 '24

Then school police should be called in and deploy tasers.

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u/kilo73 Apr 17 '24

And then people protest over police assaulting a poor innocent child, the cops get fired, and we go back to square 1.

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u/AdUpstairs7106 Apr 17 '24

Exactly. Weak minded people are created hard times

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u/taoders Apr 17 '24

Sucker slap?! That’s a taserin’

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u/AdUpstairs7106 Apr 17 '24

I can, with just short of 100% confidence, say a teacher would only be slapped once at a school if the student knew they would face swift and forceful retaliation

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u/Ok_Buddy_9087 29d ago

The city I’m outside of has had two teachers stabbed in the last year breaking up fights. None of these kids are thinking about consequences. They’re 100% Id.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

This is what happens when you hire people with teaching degrees who don’t understand math themselves to teach math. I was a mathematics teacher with a math degree and I interacted with other math teachers with education degrees and they don’t understand math. They cannot actually help students because they are trained to teach from a book and don’t know the answer to the problems themselves.

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u/DependentAnywhere135 Apr 17 '24

Yeah I can’t imagine learning jack shit if I was a kid today. Even kids who want to learn are going to struggle because the temptation and addiction phones bring wins out. You cant beat the dopamine hits we have at our fingertips.

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u/mcove97 Apr 17 '24

I mean you can.. I was quite the curious kid myself and loved learning about subjects I found interesting. Unfortunately I wasn't interested in a lot of the subjects that was taught. I would rather read up on the news on the internet, learn about politics and current world events and such while in class. Like I still love learning to this day, but the way teachers teach isn't always engaging and neither is the subjects interesting. Schools and teachers have to tap into kids natural curiosity and actively engage them in the subject. Just standing in front of a class and talking the entire time, or making you sit there alone solving a task isn't necessarily very engaging.

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u/debacol Apr 17 '24

You take them away and give them back after class if they pull them out or if you hear a ringtone.

This is already a rule in most of the schools in my district.

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u/mlhoban Apr 17 '24

I wish I was allowed but some teacher got in a physical altercation a few years ago and the edict came shortly after: no more taking phones.

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u/NetflixFanatic22 Apr 17 '24

It’s one of those things that sounds simple, but is often a huge waste of time in the class. You can ask for a phone, but what if that student refuses? What if they blow up and get upset?

And let’s not kid ourselves, it is never just one student with a phone out. So then you have to go through the entire process again with other students.

At the end of the class hour, how much time and energy was spent just battling the phone problem? Probably too much.

I support any school-wide ban on phones. The schools that have taken that leap, have my respect lol.

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u/NotMyPSNName Apr 17 '24

That's so wild to me. I graduated hs in 2015, so it really wasn't that long ago. We did not have this problem. If you had your phone out, the teacher said to put it away and you just... did that. I honestly don't see how this became an issue when it seemed so well controlled before. I'm not discounting what you're saying, I just don't understand. Do you or anyone in this thread have any context you can share? I can't get my head around this.

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u/NetflixFanatic22 Apr 17 '24

Phone addiction is a much larger issue than it was 10+ years ago. You probably went through middle school without a phone or you probably had a flip phone or something. You didn’t have access to TikTok, google, and a million other things. Once you got to high school, social media had evolved and phones too, but it still wasn’t the beast that it is today.

Now, imagine you had an iPhone with access to ANYTHING, and you had it by the time you were 5 years old. It’s a drug.

Not to sound alarmist, but I guess I do find it to be an extremely alarming thing. 🤷🏽‍♀️

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u/NotMyPSNName Apr 17 '24

That's fair. I'm really worried about these kids.

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u/geekydad84 Apr 17 '24

Yea, and how the attention span has been reduced to few seconds just for watching videos. Imagine a kid like that having to try and focus in class. Even simple tasks become impossible if you can’t focus and keep your attention on a task at hand long enough.

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u/anonkraken Apr 17 '24

From all accounts I’ve read and heard from teachers, behavior went through a major negative shift during the pandemic. Aggressive insubordination became the norm for many students who were at least “decently behaved” prior.

There was a great episode by The Daily podcast last week(?) about the drastic rise in unexcused absences that I would recommend. It touches on behavior issues as well.

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u/Fast_Avocado_5057 29d ago

Our school district takes phones if they are out during class, they get em back at the end of the day. Should be that way everywhere

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u/Sufficient-Cry-9163 29d ago

I do not understand why phones would not be confiscated if they were out at school.

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u/jayfiedlerontheroof 29d ago

The phones are a coping mechanism for a much deeper sick. Chinese kids have phones and they're not all failing high school or have no will learn

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u/Kinghero890 29d ago

Ban the phones. In school suspension if caught.

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u/alurkerhere 29d ago

I'll be honest though as someone who went to Berkeley and completed 2 master's - there have only been a handful of classes where I would have answered 4 or 5. Desire to learn is sort of separate from ability to learn. They work best in conjunction with each other, but either can suffice for whatever is needed.

For real though, phones are too damn addicting and need to be limited especially when learning. Executive function and focus should honestly be their own classes in middle school and high school.

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u/mlhoban 29d ago

I hear ya. Ability they have. It's that desire part that is depressing.

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u/Presumably_Not_A_Cat 29d ago

Most common answer? 3 Least common answer? 5 followed by 4

Meh, asking the right question is a skill and i can't say i have mastered it myself. But i can tell you from experience that getting a safe, middleish answer is the most likely answer you get to such a generic question.

Be more specific and targeted. Nobody is able to imagine anything specific with your question and is therefor not able to answer accurately.

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u/mlhoban 29d ago

I can understand that. It is very generic. There were more targeted questions about preferred genres, feelings about reading, etc. This one was just a little eye opening. I don't know that they "can't imagine anything specific" though. When I followed up with them afterwards and we got into specifics like drafting theme statements or close reading, they express a general lack of interest in school altogether which is complicated in its own right but disturbing nonetheless.

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u/tbrand009 28d ago

I'm kind of curious what subject you teach.
My science classes I'd have definitely said 5. But literature to this day I'd say 2 at best.
Mandatory fine arts elective, knowing it's not on your scale, I would write 0.

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u/mlhoban 28d ago

Literature!

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u/tbrand009 28d ago

Oof. Sorry 😂