No, students don’t get a vote.
Somewhere along the line, we started treating classrooms like town fucking halls. Rules became suggestions. Sanctions became “conversations.” Teachers were told to listen more, say less, and act like facilitators rather than leaders. And now we see the rusults: Total fucking chaos. Kids don’t need a peer, they need a boundary. A classroom is not a democracy. It’s a learning environment, and the adult is in charge. So step the fuck up and act like a fucking adult!
Reclaiming the Classroom
This is the final part of my series on student behaviour. In Part 1, I tackled the breakdown of basic civility: the rudeness, the refusal, the fucking cheek. In Part 2, I broke down the dopamine nightmare—the tech-fuelled, attention-sapping, overstimulated disaster we’re now expected to teach through.
Now it’s time to fight back. This post is about what we can do—because while we’re not responsible for fixing everything, we sure as shit don’t have to lie down and take it. Reclaiming the classroom isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being intentional. Strategic. Defiant.
The Dopamine Dilemma
This is the second post in my series on the collapse of classroom culture. In Part 1, The Erosion of Classroom Civility, I looked at the entitlement, apathy, and aggression now normalised in schools. Here, I want to dig deeper into one of the most toxic forces behind it all: the dopamine economy. Students are chasing short-term highs, scrolling themselves into oblivion, and treating education like background noise. We’re not just competing with social media; we’re losing to it.
The Erosion of Classroom Civility
The classroom, once a space of basic cooperation—however reluctant—has become loaded with hostility, apathy, and arrogance. The respect has gone. Kids walk in late, with no pen, no folder, no clue what day it is, and expect to be entertained. If you challenge it, you get attitude: “Why are you shouting at me?” or “What’s your problem?” The concept of effort is alien. The idea of consequence? Hilarious. School is no longer a space for learning; it’s an inconvenience in their dopamine-chasing day
Why Modern Lessons Are Designed to Distract
Lessons are no longer about learning. They’re about ticking boxes. Students get dragged through pointless routines. Teachers are forced to follow a format that kills thought. Every lesson looks busy on the surface, but underneath, nothing’s happening.
This isn’t just bad practice—it’s a failure of fucking purpose. Schools have been redesigned to control attention, not to build understanding. As Psychology Today puts it, we’re in an attention economy now—and students are the ones being harvested. Learning isn’t the goal. Looking like learning is.
