Teachers say no one should 'fail' ... The U.K.'s "Education Secretary Ruth Kelly has dismissed suggestions that the concept of 'failure' should be removed from school in favour of 'deferred success'." Much like Tony Blair's Iraqi adventure.
In the 70s, I once went to a school where they tried something wacky every year. One year, it was "no one should fail". I forgot the reasoning behind it, but it was some mumbo jumbo about recognizing the inherent abilities in each student, blah blah blah. Basically, it meant that no matter what you did, you were passing. Among the "baddies", it ended up being a de-facto contest of who could do the least. In my class, probably 3/4 of the pupils were useless, but two really distiguished themselves. Jeff managed to do absolutely nothing - straight zeros all the way. You'd think that's as low as anyone can go, however Robert topped that by doing absolutely no work, vandalizing classrooms, and physically threatening his male teachers. (It was a rough school!) At the end of the year, they gave out the grades. Remember, no one fails, so the lowest mark was supposed to be a D-. The problem was how to differentiate between them. After some deliberation, they gave Jeff his well earned D-, and for Robert, they gave him a special grade of D--! Needless to say, that was the last year they tried that experiment. I have no idea what eventually happened to those two.
In the 70s, I once went to a school where they tried something wacky every year. One year, it was "no one should fail". I forgot the reasoning behind it, but it was some mumbo jumbo about recognizing the inherent abilities in each student, blah blah blah. Basically, it meant that no matter what you did, you were passing. Among the "baddies", it ended up being a de-facto contest of who could do the least. In my class, probably 3/4 of the pupils were useless, but two really distiguished themselves. Jeff managed to do absolutely nothing - straight zeros all the way. You'd think that's as low as anyone can go, however Robert topped that by doing absolutely no work, vandalizing classrooms, and physically threatening his male teachers. (It was a rough school!) At the end of the year, they gave out the grades. Remember, no one fails, so the lowest mark was supposed to be a D-. The problem was how to differentiate between them. After some deliberation, they gave Jeff his well earned D-, and for Robert, they gave him a special grade of D--! Needless to say, that was the last year they tried that experiment. I have no idea what eventually happened to those two.
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