Teachers vs. Students, or A Generation That Feels Entitled

Well, a teacher named Natalie Monroe (I think) has been in the news lately for posting a lot of negative comments about her students on a blog. Now she didn't name the school or the teachers and students, but she did express her frustration (and some of it with a healthy dose of profanity) at the sense of entitlement that she feels that her students sometimes have. My favorite part was the comments that she wanted to put on the report card but couldn't, such as (and I paraphrase because I'm too lazy to look it up right now): "This child is worse than the last. You must be the worst parents in the world" and things of that nature.

I posted a link to articles about this teacher and most of what I got were people reacting negatively to the teacher rather than the students. I mentioned that she's entitled to free speech, but one friend did comment that "free speech isn't free." He meant that if she's going to attack her students, even if not by name, in a public forum such as a blog, one of the consequences of her free speech is that the school board may choose to fire or suspend her.

My friend is correct that "free speech isn't free" and there are a number of court cases out there recently about people who trash their employer or work conditions etc. on Twitter, Facebook and Blogs and are fired--do they have a right to do it and such, and what should be the consequences of it, and how far does free speech go,and should employers monitor this kind of stuff--but I am actually more interested in the question of why teachers like Ms. Monroe are so fed up with the kids in our educational system. Because if they all quit tomorrow we would have no teachers.

I hear a lot about kids with a sense of Entitlement. In other words, they think the world OWES them a lot because they have always been given a lot, so why does it need to stop? I personally believe that while this has been a problem for a long time, it is getting even worse, although I'm not sure why.

Part of it is that everything is so "kid centered." Goodie bags at the pharmacy. Coloring sheets at the restaurant. Happy meal toys at McDonald's. Every time you turn around as a parent, someone is handing your child free stuff. It may be for advertising purposes but the kid gets used to being given everything by everyone, even strangers. For birthday parties and soccer parties etc. you get "goodie bags." Parents bring snacks to all the games, as if you couldn't go an hour and a half without eating something. We are told to have snacks for Scouts and Destination Imagination. The kids take snacks to school if they have an early or late lunch. So the kids are constantly eating (usually something that comes in a bag and contains hydrogenated vegetable oil) or being given various free gifts. It's no wonder that some of them are obese and materialistic when they get older.


At some point parents decided that they were supposed to be their children's friends and not their parents. Now I want a good relationship with my kids too but I am not their friend. A parent has to say no. A parent has to impose limits. Friends get to just hang out and have fun. Let's face it, after they are teenagers, the kids probably don't want to hang out with their parents and have fun. They want to hang out with their friends. I am seeing this already and I think it is just one of those things you have to get used to as a parent. You can treat your child respectfully but you are the grownup and you have to be the bad guy sometimes.

Another friend of mine, who lives in a really affluent neighborhood (much nicer than most of us live in) has had several problems with his teenage daughter. One of the more minor ones is that she recently spent $2000 on clothes and her mother (they are divorced) had a fit. Now the mom gave the girl the credit card, and I don't think she ever gave her a spending limit. Don't you think a limit would have been helpful here? (by the way, I don't think I spend more than $2000 a year on clothes for the whole family!! And if I do, you can bet I get some of that money back by reselling the old clothes, especially the kids' stuff). I mean, whose fault is this, the teen's or the parents'? You know, if I could go spend $2000 on clothes without my husband minding, I'd probably do it too. But I don't think that would be appropriate even if I was working, unless I had an awfully good salary!

I think every teen needs a spending limit for clothes. I don't care if it's $200 or $20,000 as long as it's a realistic limit for the kid based on the household budget. Of course, my kids would never be given a credit card and told to just go shopping in the first place--I'd be more inclined to give them cash, a debit card or a gift card. You can't overspend if you pay cash!!! My friend tried to tell me that his daughter's clothes are just really expensive because they live in an "affluent" neighborhood (I guess that's different from the crappy neighborhoods or "wanna be" neighborhoods that the rest of us live in). I don't think the cost of the clothes is the point--it's the amount of the budget and whether the child has ever been given any limits. Because if she decides to use her credit cards like that when she's an adult and is in a starter job, she will be in bankruptcy in a year (unless her parents, of course, bail her out--which of course they probably will).

My latest thing with the girls is to try to give them allowance and pay them for grades, but then when they want stuff, make them use their allowance and grade money only, unless it's for something that is a necessity such as clothing or food (but if they want lots of expensive snacks at the movies I'm not above making them bring their money even if I pay for the movie). They had some Christmas gift cards and they wanted the GLEE DVDs, so they used their gift cards. I think I paid about $1.22 for both the first season and the first half of the second season (and Robert was ecstatic that we could finally delete some GLEE from the DVR so there would be more room for Star Trek, Jeopardy, old movies and documentaries). Yes, I'm the mean mom. They don't have cell phones yet and they are not on Facebook, adn I'm not letting them on it unless they "friend" their parents. You know, they can have face to face and private and even text conversations without me listening in--they don't need to be posting on the Internet for all to see without me knowing about it.

Now GLEE's an interesting show. I probably shouldn't let my kids watch it but since they are still talking to me now I do, but I watch it with them. It does deal with bullying, teen pregnancy, gay teens, teen dieting and body image and other "cutting edge" issues in a much more dramatic and less "High School Musical--Everybody at this school is just AWESOME!" way. People on GLEE do mean things to each other. They lie, cheat, bully, act sarcastic, and sing. It's actually not that far off the mark from high school sometimes. You have the jocks, the cheerleaders, the overweight kids, the drama/music kids, the band kids, the goth/steampunk kids, the gay kids, the minority kids, the Jewish kids, the thug kids, the disabled kids, etc. Although they don't seem to have the "intellectual" good student kids on this show. In fact, most of the kids seem rather dumb on an intellectual level. So, I'm still the unrepresented minority.

I think my favorite character is Mercedes, who is an overweight African American teen girl who can really, really sing (in fact I think she's the best singer on the show). She played Frankenfurter in the Rocky Horror Glee Show (they had a fun time doing that for prime time!) and she sang an amazing version of Sweet Transvestite (although she had to be from "Sensational Transylvania.") Most of the Rocky Horror show went totally over the girls' heads--they have no clue what a transvestite is, and especially when the role is played by a girl instead of a boy. They wanted to see the real movie and I said, "Maybe when you're sixteen or so." I like Mercedes because she has no fear. She just does what she wants and says what she wants even though sometimes inside she is really lonely and hurting (there aren't a lot of black guys at the school and she doesn't have many dates, and she's not cute and thin like the Cheerios on the cheerleading squad). In fact, she was on the squad for a while until she found out what she needed to do, which was starve herself to death in order to lose weight. At that point she quit. And good for her!! She's very attractive but she doesn't know it, and what makes her attractive is not really her appearance but her confidence.

Of course, one of the reasons that Mercedes is my favorite character is not because she's overweight like real people sometimes are, but that that she's not whiny all the time like all the other kids. Blonde cheerleader Brittany is just extremely stupid and sad. Santana, another cheerleader like Brittany, is the really really mean girl. Quinn, the head cheerleader, is pretty and talented but can also be a backstabbing litte b-i-t-c-h. Rachel, the big singing star, has a lovely Broadway voice but she walks all over everyone else because she thinks she's more talented than they are, and she's obnoxious. Finn, the football quarterback who can sing, is just clueless about life and cute but kind of dumb. Puckerman is the thug and he's the most attractive of the boys in some ways, but his moral compass is totally out of wack, so he's the bad boy everyone loves. Sam is the blonde hunky football star who's obsessed with his appearance and being perfect (boring!!). Artie is the kid in a wheelchair who's really nice but full of self pity. The Asian kid, Mike, doesn't say much and mostly dances. The Asian girl, Tina, same thing, although she does wear really interesting steampunk and goth style clothes that would get you thrown out of our schools on dress code violations (come to think of it, so would some of the other outfits these kids wear). The gay kid, Kurt, had to transfer to another school due to bullying, and he's a really great guy (and this kid is an awesome actor who used to do Destination Imagination), but he's very sensitive. So none of the boys really do much for me--they're--well, boys (actually all of them are in their 20's).

But they all just Whine and Whine about EVERYTHING (except for Mercedes, and she does it sometimes too). "Mr. Shu, (the Glee Club Director), why can't I have the solo? Rachel always gets it!" "Mr. Shu, do we have to sing this stupid song from the 70's that you like?" "Mr. Shu, why do we have to wear these stupid outfits?" On and on and on. Whine about teachers. Whine about school assignments. Whine about whatever you don't like because if you make enough noise about it, someone will fix things for you so they don't have to listen to you whine.


When did we get to whine about everything just because it doesn't suit us? I don't like my chicken. I don't like my milk. I don't like this dress. I don't want to go outside. I don't want to come inside. I don't want to get off the computer. I dont' want to set the table. I don't want to watch this show. I don't want to do my homework. I'll do it later (maybe). On and on and on. My kids do it too and some of these whines are from mine, especially one of them in particular who we call "Stinkerbelle" when she gets into one of these moodes. She got so whiny and ugly with everyone yesterday that I had to speak to her and dock her allowance one dollar. She did shape up a bit after that though.

So, kids, get this: the world does not owe you a living. Many good people are out of work right now. So get serious about school or your career and stop whining about what you want to be when you grow up. Some of us still don't know.

Also, please please please stop asking me for everything you see that someone else has and you don't have. We have a lot of stuff here at the house but we don't have EVERYTHING and we never will. I'm sorry that you don't have an ipad/ipod/video conferencing phone/bmw/pool/treehouse/trampoline/$150 cocktail dress for the opera. I'm really sorry but I'm doing the best I can here. Your dad and I do without plenty so you can have more. Maybe we should not give you as much as we do, just maybe.

There will always be someone with more expensive toys or clothes than you. ALWAYS. Learn to deal with it. We have. This was also true when we had two incomes and no kids and plenty of money for whatever we wanted to do, within reason. There were still plenty of people with MORE.

(Some people say "Less is More" but I must admit that I am actually a "More is More" kind of girl. "Less to me is just "less.")

I felt terrible earlier this week when we went to pick up our Girl Scout cookies and the mom, who put us off doing this for an hour and a half so she could go shopping, had just bought her daughter a brand new spring green cocktail style dress to wear to the opera field trip, with matching yellow shoes (the underskirt was yellow) and beading on it (cost estimate for the whole thing about $200), while my daughter was torn between wearing a secondhand dress picked up at Once Upon a Child and a Christmassy Justice outfit that she hadn't worn over the holidays, that was new but obviously not for spring. The weather had turned warm since we had planned the outfit, and the fact was that everything she had was either too wintery or too casual and for summer. She was leaning toward the secondhand dress but decided on the Christmassy outfit with more glittery stuff on it, since the other child had the fancy new dress. We also gussied it up with some of my jewelry. (She had the best jewelry there, even if she was a tad overaccessorized).

I only felt vindicated when we went on the field trip and it turned out that everyone else, except for this girl and one other, was wearing their holiday clothing or some older dress that had been purchased for a prior occasion. The only other girl in a new, fancy dress has two dentists for parents. Now there's a profession to consider.

The interesting thing was that while we were there, some of the other school groups got there and a number of them were NOT dressed up at all but were wearing jeans and casual clothing. Little Miss Green Dress said, "Why aren't those kids dressed up for the opera? We were told to dress up!!" I said, "look, I don't know where those kids are from or how they were told to dress, but you know, not everyone has dressy clothing in their wardrobe. A lot of people in the community next to ours can only afford the basics and don't dress up, even for their jobs or church." This is true. The community next to us is primarily Hispanic and many of the kids qualify for free lunch and get clothes at Christian Community Action. They go to church in jeans. Most of their parents work in jobs that require only casual dress.

She looked shocked. It didn't occur to her that not everyone lives in a $500,000 house like she does or gets a new cocktail dress (or at least has other decent clothing in their closets) to wear to a function like that. She's a nice girl but she has that sense of "Entitlement." You know, "I'm adorable and my parents love me so everyone else does too, and the world is my oyster." Now this is a nice, smart child who will probably do just fine in life, but altogether too many kids have this attitude.

So, kids out there: it's not that the adults really hate you or your parents, but you need to be realistic about your abilities and don't think for a minute that the world owes youanything. It's tough out there, even for the good, smart, hard-working people. Your parents will shelter you as long as they can from this, but sooner or later you will find out that the world is probably NOT your oyster. Or even a clam. Sometimes the world is a stinky old crayfish and you get to suck out the stuff in the head. Yuck.

(Of course, if you are from Louisiana it won't bother you).

Pleasant Valley Mom (going to go see what my kids think they are entitled to this evening).