Not sure if you meant it this way, but this comes off as a pretty flippant take on humanity’s evolutionary history and psychology as applied to a middle school classroom. There’s a lot more going on than just humanity’s supersocial nature.
Of course, we’re social animals lol but within that reality, we have largely been able to communicate effectively and engage in learning. What the original commentor is saying is that those kids, apparently one third of each class, are severely lacking in any functional communication skills and framework.
Throughout our species’ history, we have developed efficient ways of communicating and learning. These kids mentioned are not trained to consider (or, in some cases, are completely oblivious to) how their communication and behavior is perceived by peers, teachers, and concerned parents and bystanders. As was stated by @[email protected], many kids think/care only about how their actions and words are perceived by their target audience. That has always been part of the learning process, but I see it has become more prevalent and somewhat louder/more pronounced in older kids than it has been in the past.
I see a lot of factors feeding into this, but I think most of them boil down to the increased isolation and anxiety experienced by teens and preteens, today, and the lack of exposure to/familiarity with efficient, substantive, respectful, and effective communication.
Growing up is confusing and frightening enough, and, now, these kids are exposed to a lot more information that’s increasingly curated into smaller and smaller sound bytes and memes designed to highlight outrage, anxiety, and disillusionment.
I think a lot of the “brainrot” culture we see today stems from young people wanting to communicate nonsensically as they are desensitized by the sheer amount of similarly coded content and communication they are exposed to. I grew up with other ways to shut off my brain and deal with the anxiety and inherent loneliness that comes with growing up and finding more of a sense of self, but these kids don’t have the same breathing room as I did.
To your last point about education systems fighting against social behavior, I actually see the opposite. A massive amount of studies and practices have been implemented on how best to utilize the double edged sword of our social nature. Nearly every professional development training or meeting I go to deals with encouraging positive social interactions and discourse. I think if you look to schools and districts that actually walk the walk of education, you’ll see a lot of progress.
Edit: I also want to say that a lot of these kids are really searching for ways to make sense of their confusing world and when they are presented with alternatives to unwind and even learn communication skills, a lot of them absolutely LOVE it. I run a biweekly D&D group for my 7th and 8th graders and one of them even refers to it as his “therapy” lol one of the best compliments I’ve been given and all the more meaningful considering kids are often such harsh critics.
I’ll admit I certainly came off a bit more sarcastic than I was intending, and it’s been a good while since I’ve been in grade school, but times of entire classes of students just fully misbehaving have existed before and will likely exist again. I remember even back in the early to mid 2000s the class I was in caused a lot of major problems for my teachers throughout the years to the point that in our 8th grade year, our class was the only one in in years to lose the privilege of going on our New York and Washington DC school trips and the only one in years after to lose those class trips.
Many of the kids were flat out obnoxious jerks and we didn’t have an excuse of “we had multiple years of virtual learning to stunt our development” to lean on.
Believe me I feel sympathy for these kids going through one of the many recent once-in-a-lifetime mass human tragedy events. They’re in a tough circumstance, with teachers trying to do their best in a criminally underfunded education system, after living through the collective trauma that was the pandemic
My intention, albeit sarcastically, was pointing out that our hard wired desire to be social is generally a good thing and what has given us a huge advantage over other creatures. For as much as teachers want to and do make a huge difference in kids lives, the overarching structure is not actually geared to help teachers do their jobs best. There is so much administrative bloat and inefficiency and funding that goes to the top of the structure that gets in the way of teachers being able to focus on teaching their students and provide them with the tools and material necessary to educated kids.
Not sure if you meant it this way, but this comes off as a pretty flippant take on humanity’s evolutionary history and psychology as applied to a middle school classroom. There’s a lot more going on than just humanity’s supersocial nature.
Of course, we’re social animals lol but within that reality, we have largely been able to communicate effectively and engage in learning. What the original commentor is saying is that those kids, apparently one third of each class, are severely lacking in any functional communication skills and framework.
Throughout our species’ history, we have developed efficient ways of communicating and learning. These kids mentioned are not trained to consider (or, in some cases, are completely oblivious to) how their communication and behavior is perceived by peers, teachers, and concerned parents and bystanders. As was stated by @[email protected], many kids think/care only about how their actions and words are perceived by their target audience. That has always been part of the learning process, but I see it has become more prevalent and somewhat louder/more pronounced in older kids than it has been in the past.
I see a lot of factors feeding into this, but I think most of them boil down to the increased isolation and anxiety experienced by teens and preteens, today, and the lack of exposure to/familiarity with efficient, substantive, respectful, and effective communication.
Growing up is confusing and frightening enough, and, now, these kids are exposed to a lot more information that’s increasingly curated into smaller and smaller sound bytes and memes designed to highlight outrage, anxiety, and disillusionment.
I think a lot of the “brainrot” culture we see today stems from young people wanting to communicate nonsensically as they are desensitized by the sheer amount of similarly coded content and communication they are exposed to. I grew up with other ways to shut off my brain and deal with the anxiety and inherent loneliness that comes with growing up and finding more of a sense of self, but these kids don’t have the same breathing room as I did.
To your last point about education systems fighting against social behavior, I actually see the opposite. A massive amount of studies and practices have been implemented on how best to utilize the double edged sword of our social nature. Nearly every professional development training or meeting I go to deals with encouraging positive social interactions and discourse. I think if you look to schools and districts that actually walk the walk of education, you’ll see a lot of progress.
Edit: I also want to say that a lot of these kids are really searching for ways to make sense of their confusing world and when they are presented with alternatives to unwind and even learn communication skills, a lot of them absolutely LOVE it. I run a biweekly D&D group for my 7th and 8th graders and one of them even refers to it as his “therapy” lol one of the best compliments I’ve been given and all the more meaningful considering kids are often such harsh critics.
I’ll admit I certainly came off a bit more sarcastic than I was intending, and it’s been a good while since I’ve been in grade school, but times of entire classes of students just fully misbehaving have existed before and will likely exist again. I remember even back in the early to mid 2000s the class I was in caused a lot of major problems for my teachers throughout the years to the point that in our 8th grade year, our class was the only one in in years to lose the privilege of going on our New York and Washington DC school trips and the only one in years after to lose those class trips.
Many of the kids were flat out obnoxious jerks and we didn’t have an excuse of “we had multiple years of virtual learning to stunt our development” to lean on.
Believe me I feel sympathy for these kids going through one of the many recent once-in-a-lifetime mass human tragedy events. They’re in a tough circumstance, with teachers trying to do their best in a criminally underfunded education system, after living through the collective trauma that was the pandemic
My intention, albeit sarcastically, was pointing out that our hard wired desire to be social is generally a good thing and what has given us a huge advantage over other creatures. For as much as teachers want to and do make a huge difference in kids lives, the overarching structure is not actually geared to help teachers do their jobs best. There is so much administrative bloat and inefficiency and funding that goes to the top of the structure that gets in the way of teachers being able to focus on teaching their students and provide them with the tools and material necessary to educated kids.