So, I recently got invited to speak to a group of teens about technology and web development. Most people would feel honored to be invited. Actually, I hate working with teens or anyone under the age of 21. I know, I know… This sounds mean but let me explain.

Typically, I speak to large audiences of adults. Many of these adults are business owners looking to build their businesses by using the web and specially social media. Typically these sessions last 1-2 hours and generally most of my audiences get a lot of my presentations. I love helping these folks and they are generally well appreciative. However, when I speak with teens it is a bit different. Most of these bad azz teens have attention deficit and behavioral problems.
Passionate teachers are a part of the problem. Passionate teachers will generally put up with any nonsense to reach a child. Are you serious? Because these passionate teachers are willing to put up with any type of behavior and they are willing to work for peanuts, they are paid peanuts. I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard a teacher complain about their salary.

In my industry (technology) my comrades and I will leave any and every undesirable situation for greener pastures. I am an ex-Yahoo! employee. I have many colleagues who currently work for Yahoo!, Google, Facebook and other tech companies. Yahoo! made a huge effort to keep me happy with perks such as a flexible work from home schedule, free lattes at our espresso bar, free health club on Yahoo!’s campus and other perks. If I had to put up with some type of unruly behavior on the job, then I would do as Lebrun James did, I would “Take my skills to ____________”. You can fill in the blank.

I spoke to a group of teens at a local New York University recently. I was a few minutes away from kicking a few of these bad azz kids out of my class. What makes the situation worse is that these teens aspired to be teachers!?!?!? What?
Lack of discipline is the problem. They need to bring back paddling. Better yet, they need the concept of the “country wood shed”. Perhaps have a truant officer figure whose sole job was to whoop some azz when needed. When unruly behavior happens, they need to take these bad azz kids to a special room in the school, and whoop they azz! For real. For really bad azz kids they need to do a public beating in front of the entire school.

And what’s up with these little kids addressing adults by their 1st names? When I was a child, I addressed all of my parents friends by “Mr. Johnson” or “Mrs. Jones”. Many of my friends have kids who address adults by their 1st names. If you are a friend of mine and you are reading this and your kids fit this description then check your little bad azz kids and teach them how to show some respect! Seriously!

I must take this time to give props to my buddy Charles Sutton who has the greatest kids. Every time I visit his home, his kids refer to me as Mr. Hamilton and they are very respectful. I am sure that Charles was whooping some azz to get them that way.

In summary, one of the reasons that are schools are failing in technology education is that most tech professionals don’t want to deal with your bad azz kids. Therefore, we just avoid mentoring. To solve the problem there needs to be violence in the form of an azz kicking truant officer and the wide adoption of general respect. So, what do you think?