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It's true, I am doing my pracs at the moment to become a teacher, and the slightest thing that may be possibly construed as negative on a students report tends to end up with parents on the attack. Kids come to school already equipped with phrases like "you can't make me do anything, you can't touch me, I don't have to do anything I don't want to".
Teachers are hamstrung, many parents have set up an impossible situation by the time the kids get to school. At their birthday parties, *every* child gets a prize during pass-the-parcel. I did it the way it worked when I was a kid, a couple of small prizes in the parcel and a bigger one at the end. Kids went nuts saying it wasn't fair, I couldn't believe their reactions, and neither could my daughter.
It is very difficult, teachers really do generally love the kids in their class, they want the best for them, but litigation and pressure from parents, as well a sense of over-entitlement that is present even in the kindy kids makes it very hard.
It seems to have come from a number of areas at once. The affordability of goods now makes kids feel entitled. I earn very little a year, yet could provide my kid with more than I could have dreamed of if I had been in the wealthiest family in Australia in the 70s.
The average 10 year old has a Nintendo DS of some description, or an iPod touch or an iPad, a game console or two at home, large screen TV(s), internet access, laptop/computer access, hi-tech (for the 70s) bikes, scooters, access to any movie pretty much on demand, games and apps that can be bought for a buck or two a throw, dvd players etc. etc. or in our family, access to a telescope and imaging equipment that would have been beyond observatory grade only decades a go.
Not because they are spoilt necessarily, you could buy nearly all that stuff for less than the cost of a single Atari 2600 in 1978, it takes a lot more discipline not to spoil a child now, or lead them to respect goods when they are so cheap and disposable. It is easier to over-feed them as food kilojoule density is a magnitude higher than when I was a child. It is harder to make them respect people or teachers as well when the old hierarchies have dissolved, and the authoritarian practices (in many cases with good reason) have been removed. Restraint generally does not need to be practiced as a matter of course anymore, it has faded from our lives.
It leads us to a difficult situation, parents want to give their kids the best they can, the things they did not have themselves, as a mark of their love and their success. They want to protect them from suffering, and believe the world a more dangerous place (it isn't) than when they were young, so let them take less risks, and by extension shoulder less responsibility. They don't learn the lessons from getting hurt, from trying and failing at something, at breaking something and being unable to have it replaced.
I don't know what the answer is. We need stronger Principals, School Boards and Teachers, we need to educate parents as well that what feels like love is actually hurting their children long term. It is burning teachers out, it is creating kids that are not resilient.
It is not all bad, learning is far more inclusive, bullying in many schools is far better dealt with, even the average schools are better equipped with technology than the best schools were 10 years ago. There is a lot of research going into education, and teachers have to be more qualified than ever, and I do see many great students who are respectful, intuitive and work hard. But parents do seem to have lost their way in larger numbers, and I do think it is mainly due to 'need' being largely removed from society, so we have to artificially construct many of the lessons of patience and growth that came automatically before from hardship and experience.
It is a tricky one.
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