<font color=skyblue>I heard that in England, they are changing the word "failed" to "deferred success".

I think we in the US say "held back" instead of "fail" these days.

This reminds me of that thread about red ink being banned for use on grading tests. </font>

Whoever's pushing for these need to grow up. Failing's a fact of life, get over it. :rolleyes:

<font color = lightgreen>Stuff like this really makes me reconsider home-schooling TJ.

This is going to produce a whole generation of spineless wonders. I mean "backbone-deprived persons whose value equals the value of every other person". :rolleyes: [img]graemlins/idontagreeatall.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/5bloodymurder.gif[/img] </font>

If you can't tell students they have failed, they will be ill-prepared for capitalistic life after school. In the real world of business, any error whatsoever is first assigned to someone for blame, before anyone even looks to whether or not the error was harmful or even needs to be addressed. Telling people they suck is a regular part of business, and I feel sorry for the upcoming generation which is just going to get pwned by this practice once they face it.

You would have to look at it through eyes of children I think to particaly understand. My nephew cries if he gets an A minus. It can be a big deal, particulrly in elementry school.

It doesn't matter which label we attach to not getting the desired results in school.

What matters is how a failing person is given a chance to suceed. And whether or not that person is helped to learn to overcome and solve their mistakes.

[ 07-21-2005, 02:00 AM: Message edited by: Chewbacca ]

How many politicallu correct idiots does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

None, because they are forever left in the dark...

:rolleyes:

So before we're all triggerhappy to jump to conclusions (oops - already too late :rolleyes: ), do you have a source for all this, Larry? Even though some of you are overreacting regardless.

No, one 'retired' (read mental breakdown! [img]smile.gif[/img] ) teacher suggested it.

Luckily the education secretary decided to say something sensible for once and gave it "nought out of ten" [img]smile.gif[/img]

In a dissenting opinion, I'll agree with Chewbacca, though maybe not for the same reasons. My schools were always on the vanguard of political correctness: We never failed classes; our grades were simply "postponed" (literally, a 'P' on the report card) until such time as we passed the class. Just one example of a vibe that was normal in that system.

And it was thoroughly embarrassing for everyone involved. Failure we could handle; we all played sports & games, and there was still that strange pride among the losers, e.g. "Well I failed 4 classes." "Haha, luzer, I failed all 6! 0.0, beat that!"

But being "postponed" had no glamor, consoled nobody, and encouraged no success, except insofar as it was embarrassing to be labelled "postponed". People would get 'D's just to avoid it [img]graemlins/laugh2.gif[/img]

<font color=skyblue>I heard it on talk radio, and this morning they said it again, this time saying that it was the Teacher's Association of Great Britain...although Aragorn says that it was just one retired teacher...but it could not have made the news over here if it was just one old teacher, could it? I have no other source than that, so the guys over there locally will have to confirm or discredit this thread. </font>

EDIT: Okay, here are two links...the first one was on the 19th...
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/arti...990025&cid=936

and then yesterday the 20th, this was posted to correct the hype.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4697461.stm

So apparently, she said it at an important meeting and the press took it as something that the meeting itself willed, though she meant it in opinion-based...not law-making. The fool should be careful where she makes opinionated statements at official meetings...for the press eats that stuff up!

[ 07-21-2005, 10:21 AM: Message edited by: Larry_OHF ]

Doubly so for most talk radio: it's half-chewed and spewed right back at the public when they get that first taste of something they can blow out of proportion. ;)

At least here it is.

Timber Loftis hits it on the head. If you don't teach someone that there are consequences, you end up with a very poorly adjusted person. If you fail to teach an entire generation, then you're putting everyone's future in the hands of bumbling idiots who can't take responsibility.

I see it all the time here. It grates on my nerve. I've just got the one left, the rest snapped long ago. If the last one snaps, I'm sure I'll make headlines as some homicidal maniac.

It's a fact that failure is a necessary part of success. Failure is a necessary part of 'progress'. People aren't perfect, and if no one fails, it's because no one is trying. I fail, a lot. The important thing is to learn from failure. I'm probably a borderline Darwin nominee, and having said that: I took apart an electric fan because it stopped working and I wanted to fix it. So there I am, and I get the idea to plug it in and see what's going on or not going on inside the housing to see if I can pinpoint the problem. Well, hey maybe it's this thing... ZAP! Ouch! Okay, that would be a "no". Failure. Let's look elsewhere. Oh, hey look at that, a melted transistor! Bing bing bing! We have a winner! Success.

Not telling people they have failed when clearly they have just breeds whining idiots whose rallying cry is "It's not my fault!"

When I'm President, I promise to introduce a bill to correct this nonsense. "F" on the Report Card will be replaced with "Y" for YOU ARE TEH SUCK.

Maybe Ofsted should consider adopting the phrase 'deferred success' for their school inspections. Reminds me of an occasion when they merged two deferrentially successful inner-city schools and boasted that the number of failing schools in the district had been cut in half.

[ 07-22-2005, 04:58 PM: Message edited by: Dirty Meg ]

<font color = lightgreen>As we all know, "failure" simply means that the student did not sucessfully learn or incorporate the material that needs to be learned before progressing to the next stage of learning. Where many educators, parents, and students make their mistake is in thinking that the student is a failure--how foolish! The student merely earned a failing grade; it isn't a personal assessment.

Just like Winter Wolf's example, we all fail--without failure there is no success. There is a stigma attached to "failure", so the stigma needs to be addressed, not the word being used. People need to grow up and get some cajones...or get out of the way.</font>