Adult teenagers

Some of you have read my previsous posts and maybe remember there was a discussion about high school students as children and as such being at risk of abuse etc. I don't want to bring up that subject again, but rahter something related to it that I recently found out. What I found out is that most of the students we discussed here some time ago and we had some fights over it are actually adults.

When I was a student at high school, we would graduate at the age of 18. So even when we became 18 in our last high school grade, we didn't feel like Now leave me alone, I am not a kid any more, but we knew that we will be on our own and responsible fully for our lives in a few weeks.

So as I am teaching the grade before last now, I took it for granted that they are 17 at most. But because these students took an extra grade sometime in the past, they end up being 18 or even 19 and they still have to study for almost two years before they graduate.

I am writing about this because this fact changes something about the attitude or the whole situation and ethical and legal aspects of teaching these adults. IN our country, which is the Czech Republic, you become legally adult at 18. You can marry, have children, you don't have to go to school ( that is at 14 I guess), you don't have to work, you can become a hermit or a tycoon, it is all up to you. So I noticed and I also heard from some of the students the opinion that it is ridiculous when teachers try to change their morals, discipline them or treat them as kids in general. I notice quite clearly that they act in a very independent and sometimes adult way and in some situations they act like crazy teenagers, irresponsible and having a hard time controlling themselves.

In this situation I asked myself: Isn't high school at the point when a student reaches 18 years of age, a kind of service, a kind of business and the students become customers rather than kids that we teachers have to look after?

The moment when I come to a classroom and the lesson begins and there is a student who is 19 and ignores my presence or when they don't listen to me when I am teaching something, it seems as if clients or customers told a company or a bank: I am not interested in your product.

THis is something that basically never happens when you teach a group of young people, maybe even the same age, at a company or at a course. I taught a lot at companies and language school and I don't remember any slightest hint of discipline problems. OR maybe my memory is bad. But seriously, no, no problem.
Because they - at a company - treat you as a product and they buy you.
They never disturb or ignore you when you come to the classroom because they are hungry for or at least interested in your product. At public high school, the general message I get at 4 pm from these 18 or 19 yuear old students is:
Oh, no, not another lesson, we are exhausted and we want to go home or at least have some fun.

At this point, I am confused, because I am offering my product to customers who tell me they are too tired and not interested. But it is not so simple, there are maybe 50 or 80 %, depending on a class or time or situation in the class, that still want your product. So these interested ones deserve a quality lesson.
So it is your job to tame the bad customers. It is a very strange situation to me. It is something like having a nice restaurant where most clients like your food, like the music, the staff, but there is a bunch of drunk people in the corner who spoil the evening for the other customers. Unless I kick them out.

In contrast, when I teach at a different kind of high school, where the atmosphere is more serious, more academic and students show much more interest in their grades and feel responsible for quality of their work, I don't have to deal with this school-product-customer-annoyed thing.
Also, there I don't teach adult students, but 15 or 16 year old teens and the school treats them as objects of ethical education - I mean the school somehow feels responsible for their behavior and look after them. We really don't have a word that translates what I mean, we have already discussed this before to no avail. It is something like school represents alternative parents to the students. It is not my opinion, it is a fact in our country. The students accept that as a fact, even if they don't like it sometimes.

So this post is about how you guys see the situation when a kid becomes legally adult and the shool becomes a public service rather than an institution for educating youths. Which I have never heard in our country, I have never come across this problem - what I feel in our public schools is that the school changes nothing when they turn 18. But what I have heard a lot from our headmaster is something like this: They have finished compulsory education and now our school doesn't have to put up with them, if they are not interested in our school, we will better expell them.

I know there are rules everywhere. You can't smoke at McDonald's even if you are 100 years old and students are not allowed to drink alcohol at university campuses in the US, no matter their age. There are rules and when they are broken, there are simple and clear measures. But at high school I feel the way we teachers treat these adult students in our country is still as if they were stuck to our school like glue, or irresponsible kids and when we punish them we do so to change them. If a restaurant kicks you out because you are yelling, they dont' do it to change your moral profile. THe restaurant doesnt' care. But the school cares - we try to get in touch with the parents and seek help in the student's families and this is confusing. But when a student goes too far showing total lack of interest, then the shool recommends expelling or expells the student.

What do you think?