When I was that age we didn't have mobile devices so not sure if it's a generational thing or just natural variance based on culture, environment, etc but from my experience growing up the years following fifth graders were much worse. Fifth graders were still distinctly children that liked child-stuff and they knew they were children (as did I at that age) whereas the two-three years after that they started to think they were on the verge of becoming adults so they thought they were smarter than they were and respected adults and teachers much less for the most part. Kind of like as children the adult world was so different from their own experience that the teachers were just seen as teachers, like that was their role- like if you saw one of your teachers at the grocery store you'd be like "what?! This guy shops? I thought this guy teaches." If that makes sense.
Whereas when kids were a few years older than that they'd be testing the boundaries with teachers and some of the magic was gone as they change mentally and realize that adults are just people too. As far as I can remember none of my classmates were openly disrespectful to teachers in fifth grade or prior to that whereas by seventh grade at least one of my teachers almost had a minor mental breakdown and completely lost her composure because so many of the kids in the class were being pricks and wouldn't listen to her at all. I saw a kid that had a knife at school trying to be badass or whatever, a different kid threatened me and my friend with a knife at a park, to me that was an age where kids were trying to be adult and do what they saw as "adult things" but they weren't smart enough to go about it in a smart way. But by the time we were in high school I don't know anyone that'd be dumb enough to try to look cool by bringing a knife to school or be an annoying prick repeatedly in class because those would be childish things to do if that makes sense.
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u/memento22mori 1d ago
When I was that age we didn't have mobile devices so not sure if it's a generational thing or just natural variance based on culture, environment, etc but from my experience growing up the years following fifth graders were much worse. Fifth graders were still distinctly children that liked child-stuff and they knew they were children (as did I at that age) whereas the two-three years after that they started to think they were on the verge of becoming adults so they thought they were smarter than they were and respected adults and teachers much less for the most part. Kind of like as children the adult world was so different from their own experience that the teachers were just seen as teachers, like that was their role- like if you saw one of your teachers at the grocery store you'd be like "what?! This guy shops? I thought this guy teaches." If that makes sense.
Whereas when kids were a few years older than that they'd be testing the boundaries with teachers and some of the magic was gone as they change mentally and realize that adults are just people too. As far as I can remember none of my classmates were openly disrespectful to teachers in fifth grade or prior to that whereas by seventh grade at least one of my teachers almost had a minor mental breakdown and completely lost her composure because so many of the kids in the class were being pricks and wouldn't listen to her at all. I saw a kid that had a knife at school trying to be badass or whatever, a different kid threatened me and my friend with a knife at a park, to me that was an age where kids were trying to be adult and do what they saw as "adult things" but they weren't smart enough to go about it in a smart way. But by the time we were in high school I don't know anyone that'd be dumb enough to try to look cool by bringing a knife to school or be an annoying prick repeatedly in class because those would be childish things to do if that makes sense.