The only two real 'suspects' for the problem would be lazy parents and lax discipline. I nearly fell out of my chair in shock when at least three different times a mother came into the office, sat down and exclaimed "my problems are over for 8 hours!!!" I wanted to blurt out "if your children are 'problems,' then why didn't you use birth control???"

When I was in school, both my parents worked, and I rarely saw them until 17.30 or 18.00 every weekday. Teachers then (from 1975-1989) did not call the parents unless there was a problem; yet my parents made time to call my teachers, find out how I was doing, discuss my progress, etc... Nowadays, the majority of parents *expect* teachers to call them regularly, telling them about their child's progress, but the same parents forbid the school to touch their child (no corporal punishment unless they sign a permission slip) to enforce discipline... It may not be like that all over the world, but in the US it is like that and it's certainly not improving. It starts in the home, plain and simple: show me a responsible student, and I'll show you responsible parents; show me a bad student, and I can show you parents that could care less about their son/daughter. In my 10 years experience teaching, I've never seen a single exception to that, either, and that's backed by 1000s of examples.

I'm surprised they didn't add to that list "changes in the weather" or "moon phases," as I even hear those used as reasons to explain serious student misbehavior from "veteran teachers" who should most certainly know better.