Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Failure is not an Option... Literally

Oh boy. Read this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/13/AR2010111304100.html?hpid=newswell

"The dreaded F has been all but banished from the grade books.

The report cards that arrived home late last week showed few failing grades but instead marks of "I" for incomplete, indicating that students still owe their teachers essential work. They will get Fs only if they fail to complete assignments and learn the content in the months to come."

You have got to be kidding me. Well, they'll still get Fs if they don't complete that work at some point, but still. Basically, a kid fails the test/assignment, and he gets an "I" because he "still owes the teacher work". Well, damn, I wish my college worked like that.

You know, the basic premise here is understandable. This is a school with a lot of failing kids, and they are trying to come up with some option that pads the very hard and very common fall into mediocrity.

Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work like this. If you fail a test in college, you fail, period. There's no make-up. Professors don't make special exceptions for you, and in all likelihood, they don't particularly care about you at all. If you mess up at work you're warned, and if you do it again you're fired and replaced by someone who can do the job competently.

"Oh, that's all right Bill. We'll dock your pay by half, and then when you finish the job in a month we'll give you it all then." No.

While on a moral level I agree with the teachers here, in this case, they are wrong. I'd love to make someone's life easier just as much as the next guy, but in this case, they aren't helping their students - they're crippling them.

21 comments:

  1. "This is a school with a lot of failing kids, and they are trying to come up with some option that pads the very hard and very common fall into mediocrity."-either that or look as politically correct as they can; OR maybe this school's amount of govt. funding is at some level contingent upon the number of failing kids or lack of for that matter, OR this school is just in danger of being labeled as a "failing" school and wants to take an easy way out; also, "Student Harmain Rafi, 16, said she views it from a similar angle, failing to see how it "balances out" not to hold students to the same deadlines and test opportunities. "It more or less says all the hard work I'm doing isn't going to be worth anything," she says." which means even some of the students at the school in question see how inefficient this will be

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  2. Some of us just are not good at school, though...

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  3. great post, great blog...I'll definitely will follow you :)

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  4. @gansita ""I don't believe it's an extra chance," she said. "It's an out. The root problem is motivation. The root problem is not that we're not teaching them.""-West Potomac High english teacher Mary Mathewson's words from the article; this means that a lack of skill for education is not at all the problem because with practice/study comes progress; it's downright apathy; a majority of those kids just don't care to do the work, and this new system caters exclusively to them, which is the real problem

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  5. I think the school system needs to take a harder stance at failure. It seems as though when you fail in elementary school, you get somewhat reprimanded, but you don't really feel the full consequences.

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  6. Despite what happens in school, it's still the parents' job to reinforce values and work ethic

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  7. yup, that failure stuff wouldn't fly at my work--I'd be fired

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  8. I noticed that the schools with more failing kids happen to be in areas where it's poorer, and the parents don't have time to instill morals in their children since the parents are working all of the time.

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  9. Nerd Life has a point. That's why the SAT (avg.) scores are better in more well off communities.

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  10. some kids don't respond to the teaching techniques at school, and it's up to the teacher to recognize that

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  11. I didn't do too well in school, but it took a great teacher to mold me into the person I am today

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  12. haven't some schools gone away from the A-F letter grades and gone to number grades?

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  13. school system needs to take a harder stance at failure.

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  14. very good stuff....good work man

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  15. "I" doesnt really make it any better lol

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  16. we used to get U's for unsatifactory

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  17. they're making it too easy for kids these days. i'm only 20 lol, but i think F's are good, because in my opinion, they stand for "fuck-up"

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  18. I think the incomplete grade is a very good idea

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