Quote:
Originally Posted by Winsor_Pilates
It is decent.
The problem with Calgary is that decent areas are the ones producing the violent youth as middle class gangsters. Violent teens are coming from Calgary's nicest areas.
I don't what it is, but so many teens in this city are little pieces of sh*t. Every high school is full of little thugs.
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I can hazard a guess as to why there so many rotten teens in Calgary, particularly from nice, middleclass neighbourhoods. We lived in Calgary up until our kids were in grades three and one respectively. They went to one of the better rated public schools in a newer NW community, so typical of the type of area you describe ... middle class, nice area. I was completely unimpressed with the teachers in that school and the fundamental policies of the school. It was one of those touchy, feely new age systems where kids weren't graded properly, let alone failed, because it might hurt their self esteem. Couldn't have that. Instead everyone was a winner and praised for every little thing possible ... "How wonderful you are Johnny, you tied your shoes. Here, put a big sticker in your agenda." The result? The kids all thought they were first round draft picks and deserved to be treated like little princes and princesses. In one extreme case I saw a kindergarten kid being escorted down the hallway by the principal, yelling obscenities at the principal and making threats. Did the little snot get any punishiment? Not a chance ... it could have given him a negative impression of himself.
And the teacher's had no prefessional committment ... they showed up for work 15 minutes before class, and were gone about 5 minutes after classes were over. In the classroom, many of them were just going through the motions. Many of them were openly hostile to the students, although I probably would have been too given the system in place and the way the little monsters were responding to it. Our son has suffered throughout his entire school career (he's now in grade 9) because of a grade one teacher he had who hated and was openly hostile to ALL little boys for no other reason than they were little boys. He went into grade one loving school and came out hating it. It has been a struggle ever since to get him to apply himself to learning. He's not dumb, but after grade one he tuned out and does the minimum required to get by. Bullying was also a major problem in that school. Sure, the school has a written policy of "Zero Tolerance" towards bullying. But it wasn't backup up with supervision or enforcment. Kids were getting beat up on the playground all the time. Knives were even present ... with kids as young as 8! There was no bullying in the school though according to the ostriches in charge.
The school in the small town we moved to (Drumheller) has a more old-school approach to learning. Students aren't automatically treated as if they're gifted prodigies. They have to earn their marks, and if they don't they actually fail the course or grade (gasp!). If they misbehave they're punished, with punishment ranging up to expulsion from the school. And the teachers are more committed to the kids and the community, largely because many of them are locals or have lived here for a long time, so they feel an obligation to the community and their own personal reputations. Many of these teachers actually volunteer to coach or supervise after school programs in sports, mucis, outdoor education, etc. I can't recall teachers in the Calgary school our kids attended volunteering for extracurricular acitivities.
The differing result between the two approaches can be seen in the way the kids behave as teens. We still keep in touch with some of the parents of the kids our kids went to school with in Calgary. Many of their old classmates are into drugs ... including three or four crackheads. One girl got pregnant and dropped out of school at 15. Others have been charged with petty crimes like theft, B&E and vandalism. A select few, those with strict parents, are still on the straight and narrow. The worst thing I've heard of any our kids' classmates here in Drum doing is getting liquored up and spewing all over the washroom at a high school dance. I wonder, do high schools in Calgary even host teacher chaperoned high school dances still?
Anyway, that's my long-winded reponse to the question you and others raised about what's wrong with the teens in Calgary today ... especially the middleclass kids from nice areas. It's not all the schools' fault I realize. Parents who are too busy to get involved with parenting their own kids are to blame too, but they already get their fair share of the blame. The Calgary school system tends to get let of the hook though, and based on my experience and observations they're a major part of the problem.