It seems that the expression, "Failure is not an option," has taken on a new meaning in contemporary education. It no longer refers to the antiquated notion that repercussions for not attaining a certain goal are so great that a person would have to be incredibly self-destructive not to achieve it; instead it means that flunking a student is all but prohibited by administration. It appears that the feel-good new agers who are currently dominating policy sessions have deigned that getting an "F" is too traumatizing for a young mind to bear. As a result, a grading system of looking-glass origins has been implemented to ensure that all but those who might actually want to be held back will pass, and the others can only stay back one year. If anyone is held back, they get an automatic pass the following year, regardless of merit (to any method actors out there, "what's their motivation?"). So much for the old adage, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Most unfortunate in all of this is that for the majority of the population, this is preparing them for life. Put in enough time, and eventually you will make it to the next level.
So, much like a toothless dog, today's educators can make a lot of noise, but can do very little in terms of actual damage. From my own experience, any teacher who is foolhardy enough to actually want to flunk a student who so richly deserves it, will find they are presented with a numerical dilemma. When I was working in public education, several teachers informed me that the only failing grade was "65," which is only one point below a passing grade. You could not give zero's, or the actual percentage they earned although you could give an incomplete, but they had the whole rest of the year to make it up. What this amounted to was watching one student fail his final exam, three out of four marking periods, get a "D" in the fourth, and pass for the year. File it under "H" for "How unfair is that?" Do one fifth of your work badly and earn a promotion. For this among other reasons, I quickly did my impression of a long-tailed rodent aboard Titanic (for any products of this system that means "made like a rat and abandoned the sinking ship).
I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised, having been through a similar system in my formative years. When you stop and think about, how unfair was/is grading on the curve? Taken to its logical extremes, you could have students getting ninety-two percent of the answers correct and still fail because everyone else got ninety-three percent or higher, or conversely, you could have someone answer less than fifty percent and get an "A" because everyone else was struggling to crack double digits. I'm sure it would be of little consolation to someone that they were operated on by the class valedictorian if he was only going to get forty percent of the operation correct (I'm sorry Mr. Jones, your thumb and forefinger are fine, but darned if I didn't put the other three on backwards. On the plus side, you'll be a real hit at cocktail parties). The bell curve could sound the death knell for education in this country.
Where did we go so far off course? Well, somewhere along the lines, educators got the notion that failing a lot of their students reflected as badly on the flunkers as it did on the flunkees. Guess what? It does, but not as badly as sending a bunch of Beavis and Butthead wannabe's out to run the country ("Man, Congress is so boring." "Heh, let's blow something up, heh." " Yeah, nuclear weapons are cool."). What happened from there was not an attempt to improve teaching skills, or the curriculum, but a steady lowering of the bar until at this point, burrowing animals are clearing it. To those who argue the labeling of someone as a failure is damaging to their psyche, I would like to say, "Isn't that kind of the point.?" If we don't feel badly about poor quality in our endeavors, what is going to make us change? Shouldn't turning in substandard work be something so traumatizing that we make every effort to avoid a repeat performance? Shouldn't we set about our own failure analysis and implement strict enough guidelines for future efforts as to make the FAA look laid back? If not, then exactly how much are we willing to compromise: fifty percent accurate pregnancy tests and smoke detectors? Would we accept something as minor as sixty-six percent of our photographs being developed correctly? How would you feel if the containers of food you bought had a plus or minus thirty-four percent accuracy on weight or volume. Well, those days are coming.
It's always been a tough thing to tell someone they aren't making the grade, especially if it looks like they're really trying, but lately it seems like calling someone a failure is about as socially acceptable as chewing with your mouth open. Unfortunately, the lessons learned at school have carried over to the real world. If you thought it was tough to give someone an "F," try firing them. You'll get hit with a lawsuit faster than you can say "wrongful termination." Stop and think about the last time someone was "let go" by your employer. If you can think of any examples at all, ask yourself how much this person had to do deliberately wrong before the ax fell? For the most part, if they were just honestly screwing up they were eventually promoted and transferred, just to get rid of them. It might have been suggested to them either by word or scheduling that they might be happier pursuing other interests, but to actually fire someone would take either a gross act of misconduct, or such rigorous documentation as to be unachievable under current standards. As if that weren't bad enough, the offending party might be able to get their job back, or win a hefty financial judgement if they can prove something like "selective enforcement," and don't tell me you haven't chosen to let a model employee off with a warning for a similar offense to the one that got the poster boy for Sloth terminated. If they happen to belong to a union, prepare to have your rights as an employer abused more than a sled dog in the Yukon. You might end up apologizing to them for putting them through the embarrassment of being caught stealing, if you still have a job that is.
How far are we from sanitizing the whole world with political correctness on this? How long before we start referring to failed marriages as "non-viable couplings;" a failed business as a "limited-term financial endeavor;" or a structural failure as a "stress-induced collapse?" Watch for the hyphenated replacement terms; it's a sure sign you're about to be caught in one of the biggest snowjobs of the twentieth century. The only one's laying blame at the feet of the... oh. let's just give in and start calling them the less-than-successful are the insurance adjusters. When you fail to... that is no longer maintain vehicle separation, it has been agreed that is not an accident, it is a crash. You see the term "accident" seemed to mitigate some of the culpability for invading the personal space of another vehicle, so they coined the term "crash," to help them lay blame... because that's what they do.
About the only place you see any effort to raise the bar both literally and figuratively is in sports. Because of the nature of sports, being forces working in opposition, their efforts to make things more difficult depend on which side of the ball you're on. For instance, moving the kickoff back makes things harder on the kicking team, but easier on the return team. Bringing in the fences makes it easier on the hitters, but harder on the pitchers. Pass interference makes it harder on defenses, but easier on offenses, and so on. I mean it's not like they're implementing forty-five foot base paths, or lowering the baskets, or widening the goalie's net, or allowing people to ride in golf carts... Oops. Well, with the controversy swarming that, I guess it's just a case of the exception that proves the rule.
One of the realities we are going to have to own up to is that our force feeding of education to America's youth not only has dragged down the overall quality of that education, but has served to make the high school diploma as devoid of meaning as the last word you put in the New York Times crossword puzzle just to say you finished. What started out as a right to education has become a responsibility to education. The truth of the matter is that it is neither; it is a privilege to education. If you don't believe me, go visit some of the poorer third world countries and ask them what they're entitled to; they don't even get three meals a day, let alone an education. If Socrates could see what a joke is being made of his Socratic method of teaching, he might be having second thoughts about that whole hemlock and death thing. He might have retired to a condo in Crete had he known the institution was headed for this end. Before we admit the futility of his sacrifice, allow me to offer that the final card in this game has not yet been turned. If there is to be any recovering of this institution, it is going to come from treating it as a privilege, one that can be taken away. Do you think parents would show as much apathy towards their children's behavior in class if they thought there was a chance their child would become disenrolled and then they'd have to pay for a private education. You can no longer shame today's parents into disciplining their children, you have to hit them in the wallet. Why do you think private schools do so much better at educating students? They don't pay any better than public schools to attract better teachers, but the students and more importantly the parents know the school is under no compunction to keep junior and his bad attitude within their hallowed halls one second longer than they care to put up with them. What's more, they don't have to refund one red cent if push did indeed come to shove. Forfeiting thousands of dollars in tuition is not the sort of thing any parent takes lightly. This goes not only for bad behavior leading to expulsion, but poor performance leading to repeating a year.
While it would be wonderful to live in a world where everyone is highly-motivated, never makes a mistake, and comes to work/class with all kinds of enthusiasm, it is a vision that will never be achieved, at least not while I'm around. Let's face facts, I'm about as motivated as the guy asleep in the back row of an Anthony Robbins Seminar; I make as many mistakes as drunk woman trying to write her name in the snow, and I've got about as much enthusiasm as a death-row inmate. About the only thing that keeps me going is a belief that as long as I try something I won't be labeled a failure. Take that away and what's left? I suppose it's akin to being a trapeze artist. You can get along working with a net (a failure-proof system), but to be really great, you have to work without one. No one talks with any great fervor about embarrassment-defying feats, only death-defying ones. Fear of failing may keep people from trying, but they were the ones who were never going to make it anyway. The point is, in order to have a life that means anything, we have to live in a world of consequence, in every sense of the word.
