The one thing that requires zero effort is shutting the motherfucking hell UP during a lesson, but my 8th grade students can't seem to make it happen, so I separated their desks yesterday afternoon and pointed all of them forward, and they'll no longer be engaging in group work.
Edit: Because we have a bunch of Dunning-Krugers in this comment thread, I will clarify.
I've been teaching for 18 years. This is my 6th year teaching 8th grade. I have four classes with more than 30 students, and a full third of the students in all six classes won't stop talking. This is not an incompetent first-year teacher saying this. This is not a jaded, about-to-retire teacher saying this. This is not just a paycheck for me. It is my vocation and I take it seriously. I earned a Bachelor's in education and a Master's in math education; my K12 students generally love my classes because I am knowledgeable and make math fun to learn, and I always get the highest evaluation scores for the undergraduate classes with students regularly saying "I always used to struggle with/be afraid of/hate math, but [teacher] helped me get my first A/B ever in a math class."
The entire school...from the teachers to the administrators...knows what I know about this group of 8th graders, that the behavior of one-third of them is beyond the pale. None of us has had a set of students like these before, and none of us has a great solution. So we are just going to take away all privileges and give them back slowly over time once they've shown that they have earned them.
It's not just that they talk to much. It is that it is a third of every class, that they make it impossible to teach the two-thirds who are capable of being decent students on any given day, that they take pride and literal pleasure in being disruptions, that they have little shame or humility and thus no impetus to allow their teachers to teach, that phone calls home are fruitless, that we have little recourse as far as the administration is concerned and have to keep them in class, that I am autistic with auditory processing disorder and can't understand what a kid right in front of me is saying even with me putting my ear right next to their mouth and them repeating their question three times...
So please save armchair teachering because you really, really don't know what you're talking about.
Shocking that the offspring of a species that became the dominant species on this planet exactly because we evolved nearly effortless communication and social traits would be inclined to be social with other people.
Not saying you're a bad teacher, you just fighting an uphill battle against our natural instinct to be social creatures in an education system that does everything it can to ignore that kids generally do like and actuall do need to be social for healthy development.
I've been teaching for 18 years. Every year before this one, things have gone relatively well. They talk a little, I quiet them down, we have a lesson, time is embedded in it for group work, and I tell them I'd like 85% of their conversation to be about the assignment. Most kids are decent. A few are superb. Some do jack shit and I struggle all year to get them to do anything. And about 5% of the students cause problems and make it harder for their classmates to learn, but they get dealt with.
Not this year. Four classes of 30+, and in all six classes a full third of the 8th grade students can't see beyond two seconds from now. My shit is getting stolen, students leave their binder in their locker when they're supposed to bring it to every single class in the building, and their entire purpose in any given moment is to say/do/destroy whatever they can to create laughs/anger/shock in someone else, who could as easily be right in front of them as they could be on the opposite end of the room. A third. Of each class. And it is relentless. The teacher next door to me had her interactive TV display destroyed by a kid yesterday...the screen is completely shattered.
Every teacher that shares these kids is having the exact same issues across the board. So we are presenting a united front and shutting it the fuck down.
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 @radicalautonomy@lemmy.world, 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.
Hate to break it to you, but this is my 6th year teaching 8th graders and my 18th overall, everything from elementary school through college, and I know more than you...namely, how these 8th graders this year are very, very different from any other group of students any of the 8th grade teachers this year have ever experienced.
My class was like that, except it was K all the way up through 12. Every year, the same problem kids, and nothing could be done about it. Every year, at least one teacher quit because of my class, rumor has it that one of the high school teachers committed suicide because of us.
Uhhhh being on time is the worst! I want to wake up naturally and go to bed whenever the hell I feel like! I can get the same amount of work done 11am to 7pm rather than 9 to 5.
How much effort does it take to pay your staff more? Almost none. You don't even actually have to do anything except tell your accountant to raise their pay.
Effort doesn't require effort if I can afford to pay you to stfu and do it because you're already homeless and will be fat soon if you don't get to be able to make your own choices about what you'll eat. Let me be worried about where all this money goes and...and...uh...