What if you offer very good education to students but they don't want it? [View all]

I'm a substitute teacher in a school district that is semi-urban. Not quite suburban. Multi-cultural. Preschool to Grade 8.

Somewhere around Grade 5, I've noticed students (not all) become indifferent and then become almost hostile to curriculum. By the time they're in Grade 8, many of them don't do classwork or homework. They take out their cellphones, and wait for dismissal.

The teachers are doing their best but they also accept the reality. They know there will be students they can't reach. Some kids will work, study, and advance in life. The others, not so much.

I think about pre-Brown v. Board of Education where the same demographic would have been denied the right to an education. What I mean is the ability to read, write, calculate, and reason. The students don't seem to want that.

And I don't get it.