My daughter-in-law just took a leave of absence from teaching first and second grades in a small town in Northern Idaho. She has a master's degree from UCI and is fluent in a foreign language. The pay was pretty low as she was just starting out but her biggest problems were the kids and their parents. She was teaching in the the "low school" (her term, not mine) that drew in part from the low income part of town. Even the first graders would curse at her and behaved awfully in many other ways. She received no parental backup as they came from alky-druggie parents. It was a nightmare for her.
This country has changed and it started many years ago. In the mid 1970s I was visiting in my home town. One of my classmate friends had an older brother who had been a math teacher at our junior high. We visited him. He and the shop teacher had started a construction business. They had each retired the day they could. I asked why. They told me the kids had changed. Well now the kids and the parents have changed...and how!
I still have business interests in Albuquerque, NM so closely follow the news there. Truancy in many of the schools exceeds 40%. A little over 60% graduate. That, to me, is a disaster!
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"No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth." Plato
“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.” Thomas Paine
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