Middle School Student Behavior, page 13

reply to post by Tayesin

You are correct. Encouraging children and teens to "fight the system" is asinine and dangerous. 99.9% of them (purely a speculative statistic) have been cared for their entire lives and lack the knowledge, skills, experience, etc. to make informed decisions about what are truly defects and flaws in "the system" and base their opinions only on what affects them on an emotional level. And, I expect most will agree, acting or reacting based solely on emotions seldom results in positive change.

Children/teens have had all of their needs supplied to them, without having to understand how. They have a warm bed and food on the table, supplied by others, shielding them from learning how to fend for themselves. They could not survive on their own, nor should they be expected to, because they have lived off the fruits of their parents/guardians, since birth. For those who doubt those statements, consider what draws runaways and neglected kids into gangs, prostitution and other destructive and/or criminal cultures.

Specifically, within the education system, kids have yet to learn what constitutes a good or bad education or a good or bad teacher. They have no experience or knowledge of the results of that system or teacher. They have never educated another person, therefor should not be judging the effectiveness of an educational curriculuum or tactic. When they say "That teacher sucks", they are only displaying their dissatisfaction, from an emotional perspective. They do not consider and will flatly ignore the fact that the same teacher may have several students who excel under their tutelage, while only a few do not. Unfortunately, those parents who encourage their students to rebel against "the system" also ignore the sensible approach and "emotionally" react to their own child's assumptions.

All of that may have just been an overly 'wordy' way of saying, I believe most educational blocks students blame on teachers and/or "the system" are, in reality, just self-imposed and perpetuated personality conflicts, with self fulfilling results.

If, on the first day of class, a student says "That teacher is dumb and he/she can't teach me anything", he/she will most likely not learn anything, regardless of the capabilities of the teacher.

Now, before some decide to break out the flame throwers, misinterpreting my statements, I have not said and do not believe children/teens are "stupid". If they do, they should go back and re-read the post.