My sweetie teaches on the southside of Chicago. A Catholic, 100% African-American school. No vouchers, parents pay for tuition and the school has LOTS of fundraisers.
He shares your love of 3rd & 4th graders. While he has to teach several grades, this is still the group he loves the most. The best way I can describe his thoughts are, that he feels this is his last, best chance to really reach kids; before the cultural pressures start taking a toll. I hope I’m explaining it right. I guess he means that they are still kids then, and so teachers can still make a difference. But starting with 5th grade, it becomes progressively more difficult. I guess what we used to call “the sex, drugs, & rock & roll” kick in. By the time the kids reach 7th & 8th grade, he’s ready for them to GO.
By then, the good ones are still good, heading to the better high schools. The rest of them are wasting their parents’ money (and the funds of private benefactors who absorb an enormous chunk of the tuition cost). They are “adult size,” somewhat violent, disrepectful, and interested in continuing the “lifestyle.”
He’s a little discouraged and seeking a geographical transfer next year.
Thanks for your observations.
There are always a few who survive. But many a “good” kid gets swept away in the social chaos and intellectual misanthropy of the later grades.
And all of the kids, no matter how poorly schooled, no matter how well trained by the later grade levels in social debasement and chaos, disrespect for morals and disrespect for the American ideals and the founders who made those ideals a national ideal, all make up society and culture, many will vote.
Even a “good” kid, proceeding to great colleges and career, can only rise so far above that baseline of the debased.