I’m not going to RT that horrible ‘why I resigned from academia’ letter because I don’t want to expand its reach. But I will say, if that is your opinion of students then you shouldn’t be teaching in the first place.

Teaching can be difficult and disengaged students can be very frustrating and even demoralising as a teacher. But there are myriad reasons why students might appear disengaged and if you don’t understand that, it’s a failing of you as a teacher, not them as a student.

I say this as someone who appeared to be completely disengaged as an undergrad - I rarely attended classes, replied to emails, revised for exams - because I was dealing with mental health crises and how thoroughly overwhelming university was as a working class kid.