Quote Originally Posted by Tri Girl View Post
General human decency seems to be going away (holding doors for others, picking up something for someone when they drop it, letting someone go first, saying please and thank you, etc...)
I had an experience in elementary school that was so mortifying I still remember it. This would've been no later than 1968, okay? My teacher had sent me on an errand to another classroom. Unknown to me, the other teacher was in the middle of lecturing her class on their many transgressions. After I'd delivered whatever it was I was sent to deliver, I started out of the classroom, and accidentally brushed against something and knocked it onto the floor, so I picked it up and put it back. The teacher then laid into her class, "See how she picked it up... why can't you do such a simple thing..."

So I guess, 40 years ago, the manners I was taught were already in short supply among kids my age. Like Aggie, I feel a little un-entitled in this conversation since I have no children. But I'm inclined to agree with the ones that say "things were ever thus." Everything always "used to be better." I heard it from my dad when he taught high school (retired about 10 years) and I hear it from my sister the college professor who's apparently forgotten the appalling stories she used to bring home from high school. I hear it from one of the aerobics instructors who's been retired for about 10 years from teaching middle school. I don't hear it from my mom the elementary school teacher, although she'll acknowledge that her interactions with parents have changed over the years, and obviously she has classes some years that are more of a challenge than other years.

I see the news media hyping certain things that don't bear out with crime statistics. For myself, I remember being terrified to put a step wrong for most of my childhood, but I also remember the trouble some of my peers would get into, and I hear all kinds of stories from DH about his childhood.

V., I AM sympathetic to what you have to deal with this year, and I'll repeat my admiration and appreciation for what you do. I don't think we need to agree on whether things used to be better for us all to say a collective THANK YOU to Veronica, TriGirl, and anyone else I've missed; a belated thank you to Crankin; and to all teachers.