“10 things teachers did not have to deal with 10 years ago“. Here are the items:
- The inability to punish students. The author is as much a fan of so-called restorative justice as I am.
- Cell phone addiction.
- Online bullying. Honestly, unless something happens at school, this is an area where I think schools should but out or, at the most, notify parents and let them take care of the out-of-school issue.
- Pep rallies for standardized testing.
- Constant student anxiety. I’ve written before how ADD used to be the “gold standard” for getting special accommodations in school, now anxiety is.
- Fear of school shootings and lock-downs. You’re much more likely to get killed when you get in a car than you are at school–but the author seems resigned to the idea that this fear is justified anyway.
- Heroin and opioid epidemics.
- Politicized schools.
- Era of “feelings” where students are never wrong–because they “feel” their grade is unfair, it is. By definition.
- Naked utilitarianism in education–schooling exists solely to prepare students for jobs or, in the case of many schools, college. Anything besides going to college is failure.