I can empathize and sympathize with this article. I worked as a substitute teacher for 2 years and quit because of all these reasons. The atmosphere is getting worse with each year. I started teaching martial arts almost 3 years ago and believed the students I dealt with on a regular basis would be better behaved than the students I dealt with when I was a substitute teacher.

Boy, I was dead wrong.

After-school programs, especially martial art schools, are definitely feeling the consequences that you have described. There's the lack of parental accountability which feeds into a child's misbehavior. Those same parents complain that their children have NO discipline and enroll them in a martial art school believing the training will magically teach it to them.

The parents simply don't care. They won't admit it, but they don't care if their kids learn anything or not, they just want us to babysit their kids and treat "discipline" as an added bonus.