I think it stems from lack of dicsipline at home. Kids aren't disciplined at home and it carries over into school. Could also be because the teachers can't do anything to the kids. When I was in school, we'd get the paddle by the teacher and perhaps the principal if we misbehaved. Teachers can't even yell at kids today.

A lot of it has to do with our mobile society. Nowadays, people often don't know their neighbors much less their children's friend's parents. When people grew up in the same town, often on the same street, there was much more peer pressure and social pressure to behave. You could yell at a kid without his parents becoming alarmed. When people are strangers, there is no village.

I think it relates to the lack of effective parenting and discipline young people experience. Behavior is learned for the most part. Young people learn to act in certain ways to gain parent attention. If that behavior doesn't work, then the volume is turned up, and presto, it works. Mom and Dad will do almost anything to avoid loud screaming temper tantrum throwing kid problems. So, we have young people who are trained to throw temper tantrums in order to get attention. This does not work very well in society, but it does work very well for the young person who has trained his or her parents to respond to the tantrum in the desired manner.

Another problem in behavior is what I will call the television/video-game babysitter. These are not parents, nor can the attention or emotional high gained from these forms of entertainment substitute for real, genuine relationship between family members. We relate better at times to machines than to other humans. This is a sad fact, but a true one.

Finally, parents who don't have high expectations of their children create behavior problems for others to deal with. Not every badly behaved student is a product of poor parenting, but many behavioral problems can be traced back to some sort of problem in the home. It does not cost the child anything to act up, so they expect to act up everywhere. The only problem is that if parents do not correct behavior, then eventually that behavior will be corrected by the law or boss.

I personally don't like corporal punishment, but I see it has a place. I have a young daughter who at times will defy me just for the entertainment value. I have learned not to yell, scold, or act at all in any way upset. I just don't respond...and then when she wants to do something...it doesn't happen...B doesn't happen until A is done. I learned this from reading a book called Have a New Kid By Friday. It is one of the best child rearing books I have read.

Children are not naturally comfortable in a school setting, it is unnatural.

The teachers are asked to teach so many different things that even when a child does learn to focus on the schoolwork, it is the teacher who disrupts the concentration to move onto another subject. The children are being taught to have short attention spans and move from subject to subject quickly.

Easy to lose control of a class or students under these conditions.