Well, seems to me I remember in the 60’s the hippies decided that “good manners” were too much restriction on their freedom of speech. We’ve been suffering the abandonment of common courtesy and good manners ever since. And, those same hippies are the liberal/Democrat legislators, teachers, etc. who are bemoning the fruits of their own labors.
“...we should be pushing our young people to be mature adults,”
How will they ever get there having been raised with false and/or inflated self esteem?
I grew up just when divorce was becoming acceptable.
I learned to stay away from the boys whose parents were getting divorced.
Stay away from the kids who have a death in the immediate family.
Stay away from the kids whose parents are always fighting.
Stay away from the kids who see their families as poor.
These kids were afraid and didn’t know how to deal with that.
There are psychopaths, too.
I can attest to the fact that junior-high kids can be really mean to each other.
At two junior high schools, I was bullied and picked on by other girls, who were mostly much smaller than I (I was 5’-10-1/2” by age 14, and eventually topped out at 6’1”).
I could have wiped the floor with any one of those little bitches, but they ganged up on me.
At one school, two tiny identical twins would follow me into the girls’ bathroom and attack me.
At the other school, a bunch of smaller girls would gang up on me in the girls’ locker room.
I know there is a stereotype by some folks of big people as bullies, but in my experience it’s the smaller girls who pick on us Amazons.