Please Stay Off Of My Lawn?

What's the matter with kids these days? Well, since we've been asking this question for at least fifty years, including right here in this blog, I'm guessing that this is a generational experience. I know that my parents certainly looked at me and my friends and shook their heads, and my grandparents were probably just as mystified at times in their position as elders. It is what grown ups do: shake their heads and wonder. What does it do? It sends a message that grown-ups, while having very sturdy neck muscles, don't have a real sense of history.
Before Bye-Bye Birdie gave us the musical question to sing along with, there was Blackboard Jungle and all that rock and roll rubbish. Disrespect for authority. Fighting in school. What is it that is going through their heads? Probably the same things that went through all of our heads for all of those years before: where are the edges? Where is our slice of the pie? W'hen do we get to be in charge? Why don't you old folks get it? The answer is simple enough: Because  we're old.
Teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are saying that a new policy created to limit suspensions has only served to fill classrooms with unruly students. In the city of angels, teachers can no longer suspend students for defiance. Instead, schools are asked to rely on counseling and restorative justice to bring about the change they hope to experience in their young charges. Zero tolerance is no longer the practice. This leaves some teachers with zero patience, as limited staffing has kept the new policies from being fully implemented, leading to the aforementioned rooms full of unruly students. No justice, no peace.
And it's not just Los Angeles that is feeling the pain. In Allentown, Pennsylvania over the last couple of weeks a "spasm of violence" broke out first at a local high school, then seven days later at a nearby middle school. A female student at was asked in the wake of the middle school fracas why the fights broke out. "Because  that's what we do - fight."
So, this is you brain. This is your brain on adolescence.
Any questions?