As Rmacqueen stated, this is as often a problem with the parents as anything. A lot of parents treat Cadets as a way to solve all their child's problems, and while Cadets is very good for doing things such as that, parents do need to take an active role in helping their own children. Otherwise, Cadets 'forced' into the program by their parents often retaliate by acting like immature six year olds, and generally making fools of themselves. It's hard to get the children to actually care about going to Cadets and having proper deportment when their parents can't be bothered to care.
Cadets these days are difficult to deal with, especially if they make a game out of annoying the other Cadet NCOs and their fellow cadets. Too many of them seem to not want to be there, and are making it a tough time for the people that actually want to be there. Once again - I understand that many parents hope Cadets will cure their child's discipline problems, but if the child honestly doesn't want to be there and the parent isn't making an effort to reinforce some of what they're taught at Cadets at home, then all the things that are taught to them are just flushed down the drain and have to be re-taught the next week.
The problems also result too many times from lax attitudes on part of the Senior NCOs, (I'm a -Cadet- Sergeant myself,) and the cadet just not wanting to be there. If one Senior doesn't bother to reprimand a Cadet, then the Cadet will expect that all Seniors will act the same. At the age of the Cadet we're dealing with, they're very impressionable, and thusly it's important that ALL the Seniors, not just one, take on the responsibility of their rank and make sure that the Cadets know what is right and what is wrong.
While it's not always the fault of the Seniors and the CIC Staff, often times the Cadets look up to these older and wiser role models, and when you've got a Flight Sergeant acting like a complete imbecile, what do you expect the younger Cadets to do? The trouble is, these Flight Sergeants are the Cadets of yesterday - and since apparently they had the same problems, it'll just keep going till someone manages to break the chain. If one Cadet's foolishness leads to another Cadet's foolishness, the second Cadet's foolishness will just lead to another... and so on.
Sergeants, Flight Sergeants, Warrant Officers - all Cadets with posistions of authority - need to learn their responsibilities and their duties clearly. It's the job of everyone who knows their responsibilities to make sure that everyone else also knows theirs, so that the Squadron, (or Corps,) functions like a well-oiled machine. (An overused expression in Cadets, but, unfortunately, one that doesn't hold true in a lot of cases.)
Cadets are like sponges. The trouble is, they soak up the bad along with the good. Keep that in mind when you're teaching, speaking with them, or otherwise at all near any Cadets, and the Cadet program should do fairly well.
Cheers,
Krisz
