Kids will be kids? Nah....

[GeneMoody-Action1]

So I saw this reading the news, and since schools are the place where kids are apparently doing this, I figured I would share in case others had not seen. Things like this tend to blow out of proportion fast, so...

I am not sure why we tolerate the youth of today brazenly doing what they will, for the sake of a moment of social media recognition.

In my youngest son's school the last year he was there, there was one of these where the goal was just "destroy school property" and i had to go have a couple rounds with a principal, because my son could not use bathroom facilities at school due to stalls not having doors, 2 of 5 toilets that worked, and missing sinks because they had literally been ripped off the wall so you could not even wash your hands.

They told the kids "we are not putting them back until someone tells us who did it", which was a bit extreme for the kids that had nothing to do with it. Told them fixed by the end of the week or my next call was the local news. It was unsafe, undignified, and just plain gross.

 

While it is NOT new that kids can be mischievous and destructive, the latter was a relative rarity pre-social media and streaming platforms. School tech also always gets more than its fair share of abuse, but wanton destruction is another matter.

I cannot imagine people could not be seriously injured by device fires in a classroom, so if someone reports their chromebook went up in smoke, I would not take it as a chance occurrence without some investigation!

https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/chromebooks/a-new-tiktok-challenge-has-kids-attempting-to-short-circuit-school-issued-chromebooks

[sigma]

I should have taken the same line when I was told, a goodly number of years ago that there was to be no soap in the students loo hand basins because they made to much of a mess with it.  I presume there is now and has been for some time.

[GeneMoody-Action1]

Yeah, as if schools are not hot-labs already!
I get the school's frustration, but there have to be better ways than promoting the unsanitary and removing privacy.

Hire bathroom monitors if you have to.

[Chris_Cook]

I saw this as well. The damage some kids are causing is getting ridiculous. One of our students was caught carrying a toilet door around the field. We get billed every time the waste disposal company finds a vape in the sanitary bins from the loo's which I guess means one of them has to check for them.

 

I'm starting to wonder if I could fail some of our really old PCs on the Pat test if they have damaged usb ports now. This might be the excuse I need to get rid of some 12/13 year old PCs.

 

We've had chromebooks handed in in 2 parts before - just held together by the wires, and 3 halves of chromebooks found in bushes around the school. Not the same CB either.

 

Problem is kids see chromebooks as a freebie and don't value them. Same with printing. I had a 6th former ask if the print credits were real money and why the government couldn't just give us everything for free. He didn't seem know that this money comes from his taxes, and I ended up asking him if he wanted to pay more just so people could print 100 pages of past exam papers.

[GeneMoody-Action1]

It's a bleak outlook for sure. And I know the average parent is like "Yeah, he just dropped that, and it broke into 5 pieces, I'm not paying for it."

I don't get it, even my kids did not get it while in school, it is one thing to fight for social acceptance, it is another entirely to lower your standards of decency to fit in. My youngest again when asked why he never brings friends to the house as we lived right next to the school. "Because everyone in my class only wants to smoke weed, do stupid stuff for likes, and if you are not friends on socials, you are not friends in real life."

My heart goes out to all of you who have to deal with this day in day out, I honestly do not know how you maintain your sanity in all of it.
I only contracted for schools, and I thought that was bad. Made my business support days and even the worst office user, seem like a cake walk.

[PotNoodleTech]

Sadly this is just symptomatic of the general decline in society.  Given that no ones alowed to impart discipline on the youth of today it's only gonna get worse and worse.

 

Punishing schools for permanently excluding children was one of the worst "behaviour" mistakes they could have made.  There's now no ultimatem.  No final straw.  Just keep on misbehaving.  

Edited May 13, 2025 by PotNoodleTech

[msi_school]

“Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants not servants of their household. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” 

 

Socrates C 350 BC

[nicholab]

Well, why did the head say that not get the answers straight away?  This kid must be a complete idiot,s as all people have to go to the toilet!!!  I would suggest that when the culprits are found that the school hire in porter loos special for their use and charge their parents.  I did have idiots who used to put the soap in the urinals, not why would you not want to wash your hands?

[Rob_D]

It can get pretty bad. I remember going into a classroom with holes punched in the wall, the (brand new) blinds ripped down and stuffed in the heaters, all the drawers ripped out the teacher's desk, and the door ripped half-off it's hinges by an angry year 11.

Oh wait, that was back in the 90s.

 

We've seen a noticeable rise in bad behavior since the lockdowns, but it feels more listless. Sure we get some fights and kids smashing things (probably more than we used to), but most of the time they just want to mooch around and not go to lessons. It's not like they're even bucking off-site to the shops or wherever, they just sit around outside or wander the hallways looking bored until a teacher tries to chivvy them back to lesson (or what ever alternative provision space they're supposed to go), then they either get bolshy, or run off and try to play cat and mouse with the teachers.

[Andrew_C]

Our carpenters have solved the "wall punch idiot" problem.  Any studwork has a layer of Stirling board under the plasterboard.  They now only do it once...

[CHiLL]

When we had bathroom vandalism, we repaired the damage quite quickly and implemented a 3-at-a-time policy, with a queue waiting to enter the toilets, supervised by staff. We have since implemented unisex toilets with shutters on them, so they can be closed during non-breaks. We only leave one set of toilets unlocked, to limit unsupervised access. My next step would be to have a camera on the opposite wall to the entrance of the toilets, looking down the length (and crucially not into the cubicles), so we can check who's been in there at a given time.

 

On another similar note, I saw recently that there's a TikTok trend spreading across the US where they are intentionally destroying Chromebooks by shorting the USB ports, with some devices catching fire. Hopefully that doesn't spread to here.

 

I also don't think it's entirely a generation/social media thing, though I don't doubt that it's increased. I worked in a school about 20 years ago, where the students would kick the computers off the desks, while the teacher was in the room.

Edited May 13, 2025 by CHiLL

[nicholab]

Also, I hear some schools don't enforce the your only allowed to use the loo outside of lesson times.

[msi_school]

3 minutes ago, CHiLL said:

I also don't think it's entirely a generation/social media thing, though I don't doubt that it's increased. I once worked in a school where the students would kick the computers off the desks, while the teacher was in the room.

I am sure there are schools with major discipline issues I just dont think its a new thing. 

 

When I was going to secondary school, most of my primary school class did not go to the local secondary becasue there had been a number of big fights and a student had been hospitalised in the late 1980.

 

One of my first jobs as an junior IT tech in 2000 was to screw wooden blocks behind the 5.25 inch drive bays in all the PCs becaause the students where putting their hands into the cases and pulling out the RAM.

[Rob_D]

19 minutes ago, nicholab said:

Also, I hear some schools don't enforce the your only allowed to use the loo outside of lesson times.

We've tried, the problem is that there will always be perfectly reasonable exceptions and the kids will exploit them to the max.

We looked at locking the toilets, but we have so many around the site, it would take most of a lesson to go around and lock/unlock them all.

 

But what can schools do? Most of our naughty kids are so disengaged they don't care about any sanctions the school can apply.

[Bumhug360]

34 minutes ago, nicholab said:

Also, I hear some schools don't enforce the your only allowed to use the loo outside of lesson times.

 

 

My partners niece has been suspended 5 times this year for truancy and each time ben found in a toilet cubical with multiple other students. Most of the time turns up late for the class, after 5 minutes asks to go to the toilet and then never goes back. Its clear she is vaping, its clear the other students are vaping, they are all different year groups so there is definitely some organisation yet the school doesn't have a vaping problem.

 

Nobody wants her vaping, but what can you do when the school turns a blind eye and refuses to do anything. The toilets are open plan, with a security camera pointing right into it yet nobody is noticing groups of 4 or 5 girls going into the same cubical. They are also the same students getting caught so why are they still allowed to leave lesson when its clear they aren't coming back

[MrEprise]

29 minutes ago, msi_school said:

One of my first jobs as an junior IT tech in 2000 was to screw wooden blocks behind the 5.25 inch drive bays in all the PCs becaause the students where putting their hands into the cases and pulling out the RAM.

 

We had this one more than one occasion which resulted in us doing the same. It probably didn't help that in order to keep costs down, we'd bought the absolute cheapest cases out there and on one such case, the 5.25" panels used to fall out without any user intervention.

 

Mind you, we even had one such occasion where we suspect a student dropped a PC out of an under desk holder, unscrewed the case, unscrewed the motherboard (along with RAM and CPU), shoved this in their bag and put the computer case back in place, in their hope not to arouse suspicion and no one saw this happen. We didn't have CCTV in IT rooms either so we had no chance at catching whoever it was

[PotNoodleTech]

50 minutes ago, Bumhug360 said:

 

 

My partners niece has been suspended 5 times this year for truancy and each time ben found in a toilet cubical with multiple other students. Most of the time turns up late for the class, after 5 minutes asks to go to the toilet and then never goes back. Its clear she is vaping, its clear the other students are vaping, they are all different year groups so there is definitely some organisation yet the school doesn't have a vaping problem.

 

Nobody wants her vaping, but what can you do when the school turns a blind eye and refuses to do anything. The toilets are open plan, with a security camera pointing right into it yet nobody is noticing groups of 4 or 5 girls going into the same cubical. They are also the same students getting caught so why are they still allowed to leave lesson when its clear they aren't coming back

So whats the parents doing about it?  Grounding her?  Throwing her £1000 iphone in the bin?  Nothing?

[Brax]

3 hours ago, Rob_D said:

It can get pretty bad. I remember going into a classroom with holes punched in the wall, the (brand new) blinds ripped down and stuffed in the heaters, all the drawers ripped out the teacher's desk, and the door ripped half-off it's hinges by an angry year 11.

Oh wait, that was back in the 90s.

 

We've seen a noticeable rise in bad behavior since the lockdowns, but it feels more listless. Sure we get some fights and kids smashing things (probably more than we used to), but most of the time they just want to mooch around and not go to lessons. It's not like they're even bucking off-site to the shops or wherever, they just sit around outside or wander the hallways looking bored until a teacher tries to chivvy them back to lesson (or what ever alternative provision space they're supposed to go), then they either get bolshy, or run off and try to play cat and mouse with the teachers.

The main issues are truanting and lack of consequences or care for the consequences. IMO from what I’ve seen.

[synaesthesia]

Kids want to be treated like adults, but their parents very often behave like kids too. So if the parents behave like kids, their kids who want to be like what they perceive as an adult, end up behaving like kids pretending to be adults.

And then you've the whole chain of consequence and discipline, and 2 sets of kids adamant that the younger kid shouldn't be responsible for nuking the science lab, destroying the chromebook, ripping the cistern off the wall or urinating into the hand dryer.

You start trying to make the kids face up to those consequences, the older kids (aka "parent") kicks off a stink then wants to "home educate" their child whilst denouncing the education system as the part that is failing.

 

[GeneMoody-Action1]

Though it often seems cliche to quote Orwell:

“Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies, they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it.”
— Part 1, Chapter 2
 

And while I agree that there have always been kids doing bad things, and to a certain degree developing self identity and discipline is a bumpy road for all of us. But the constantly streaming, camera connected to the internet, digitally addicted youth, have certainly raised the bar. 

Example: When I went to highschool, there was a length limit on pocket knives, and our school handbook stated "All firearms on school property have to be in a locked vehicle", was not uncommon at all to see someone who was coming from before school or headed to after school, hunting. I learned to dis/re assemble and clean a 12g pump shotgun in AG class!

No one was ever shot, stabbed, and even in a fight if it got out of control others stepped in. We even had a coach that had boxing gloves / sparing gear, and would take to people that just felt they had to lay into one another, to the gym, and offer them the gloves to "just get it out so we can all get back to learning". Seldom to never did they even put the gloves on.

Now days the kids intervening in the fight would just be cheering them on with 30 cell phones pointed at them, and the coach would be fired, most likely sued as well.

So there is a generational difference, while not new, it is exponentially worse. And I am not sure who thought giving children unrestricted access to all the debauchery, corrupt ideology, and in general wrapping their entire existence up in the affairs of strangers, would end any different. Cell phones help overthrow governments, they will topple schools and homes like stacked playing cards. Once, when a child had questions, their circle of influence was small, keeping track of who supported them with their best interest in mind, was easier for educators, parents, and people that cared about them to manage. Now they are a search away from people telling them that whatever issue you are gong through, here are a thousand other people who feel the same, and are here to "help". IF that is "I want to kill all the people that are mean to me" to "I want to kill myself". That just could not happen pre internet/smartphone.

And while laws may vary from country to country, district to district, one I feel is fairly universal is the types of content it is illegal to give children, such as pornographic, extreme violence, cult/extremist group recruitment, et alia... But it is completely acceptable to give them a device with access to all of it + a million things you never even dreamed possible.

This guy, he knows whats up. And any humor you may find in this is directly proportional to the sadly true nature of it all.
 

 

But... What they are being exposed to has an absolutely opposite effect of what biology intended, they are NOT learning things that benefit their species, they are participating in mindless exploitation than weakens their ability to carry their species into the future. We are starting to pay for this already, expect the next 35-50 years of electing leaders from this pool to be challenging.

 

The people making it know they have the inability to control those impulses, so they turn the meter to max, and let it rip in the name of profit and attracting more of them.
If you have nextflix go watch the social dilemma where they use a mock family to demonstrate what the actual minds (Google, facebook, etc engineers) behind a lot of the social phenomenon's development.

And they tell you HOW these things were designed to do what they are doing to our youth (And a lot of adults)...

It's criminal, it is lord of the flies with a billion kids stranded on an island in the internet.

After watching see if you can get your school to approve a mass watching, invite the parents...

That one line "Everyone is entitled to their own facts", SMDH

 

[LeMarchand]

On 13/05/2025 at 08:59, msi_school said:

“Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants not servants of their household. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” 

 

Socrates C 350 BC

 

 

Probably not Socrates and from 1907: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/

[msi_school]

46 minutes ago, LeMarchand said:

 

 

Probably not Socrates and from 1907: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/

Ok I should check my citations better but this is a distillation of ancient complaints about children.

 

Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. 

 

I do not dispute that some children and families are terrible and some people had idyllic education in their youth. My thesis is that a combination of factors affect our thoughts about 'Kids today'

• To an extent we all have rose coloured glasses

• The children who were fighting and disrupting their classes are rarely the adults who are commenting on professional forums

• A school having a good discipline record and no issues is not a good news story

• The rise of social networks and mobile phones are new fangled things 

• I don't know about anyone else but I am less accepting of noisy and disruptive behaviour than I was as a teenager

Edited May 14, 2025 by msi_school
the whole thing was in bold for some reason

[mthomas08]

Behaviour is a problem, I'd say a bit more rife these days with social media influecing them but I will add.. don't for one second think behaviour was all cushy back in the day.

 

As a kid....  I was rotten. The worst in my primary class (by far) and the other bad kids generally came from similar backgrounds... poverty.

 

I didn't have positive parents pushing me to behave or do well, as long as I didn't give them a headache.. they didn't care.

 

Parents don't support schools enough and never blame themselves, just like my mother.

 

I could talk about some of the kids/friends from secondary..  two went to prison..  few became addicts (drink/drugs)...  few more had electronic tags.

 

Again, most of them came from similar backgrounds. With support systems being cut/scrapped, parenting not improving...  schools facing the odds...  I hope me doing things right gives my daughter a good fighting chance to avoid that life.

 

Edited May 14, 2025 by mthomas08

[Koldov]

OK, I'm sure I'll regret this but... I was one of those teenagers... and I did a LOT of bad 'stuff'.

 

Now, this was in the early 80s, before any of this internet nonsense. In my adult life I've tried to make sense of my behaviour many times and as an adult I abhor this type of behaviour (in children AND in adults). Now viewed through an adult lens, as I'm far less tolerant and honestly, I fail to recognise that child and I've got no magic solution as to what could be done about it (I will say though I had my fair share of corporal and non-corporal punishment and it didn't stop me), but I'm also not sure if being given a one-to-one, or taken to the office to play games would have helped either (I was often excluded, taken out of lessons, etc. Never managed expulsion for some reason though).

 

I'll keep my conclusions to myself as to the reasons why and not get into the 'nature/nurture' debate, but I will say that I do agree (as I'm sure most of us do) with some points in the previous post by @GeneMoody-Action1 about the ease of access to the influence of social media and the internet in general.

 

In those (back in the 'good' old) days, peer groups were small, so influences were small. Generally the group you hung out with were known to the parents and came from the local area. We all knew the trouble makers, the bad influences, the troubled families, the adults to stay away from and the areas to stay out of. But, I'm going to say times were different then, weekends and holidays we went out in the morning and came home for dinner... we didn't have mobile phones with access to $deity knows what, computer games to spend all day in our bedroom with and we didn't have influences from various websites and social media platforms. Yes, I did some bad things, and I had some 'bad' influences, but they were limited and we only generally had access to limited resources... the only p*rn we had access to was if we found a dirty mag in the woods... the only drugs we had access to was if someone's older brother sniffed glue. There wasn't any knowledge of internet hardcore p*rn sites, or county lines drugs gangs. There wasn't any access to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world trying to influence us into doing something bad to ourselves (or other people or property). There were no internet social media platforms using an algorithm to force feed us dangerous content.

 

So, I will say that although it didn't stop me doing anything, I would say that at that time if I had access to some of the things I see on the internet today, I think it could have been a lot worse. 

 

The OH and I often have the conversation as to whether things are genuinely worse these days, or whether there is so much more reporting of them. I mean are there actually more paedophiles, murderers, anti-social behaviour, drug use? I started smoking at 15, as did a lot of my peer group. Do more teenagers vape than used to smoke? I will admit I do think certain things have certainly become worse in recent years, in my day although the chances of getting beaten up were high, the chances of being stabbed were almost zero, it was rare anyway and for young teenagers...?  I certainly never heard of it growing up.

 

In conclusion, yes there have always been 'bad' children, but today's child has a whole new world of things to cope with and I do think that there is a much wider and more dangerous circle of influence, which leads to a greater prevalence of such anti-social behaviours...

Edited May 14, 2025 by Koldov

[nicholab]

I don’t know why anyone starts smoking as it been dangerous for 68 years.  Also the Drugs messages is still simple Just say no!