There are no failures in British schools
Get ready to e-mail this one to your friends…
The Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) wants to remove the word “fail” from scholastic vernacular and replace it with the phrase “deferred success”. They fear that telling a student that they failed “can put them off learning for life”.
A spokesman for the group said it wanted to avoid labeling children. “We recognize that children do not necessarily achieve success first time,” he said.
Can you imagine?
“Congratulations, Timmy. You deferred your success on yesterday’s pop quiz! Oh, good for you!”
(Tip credit to observer)
I had lunch today with a group of like-minded businessmen and while discussing this tidbit of political correctness, one noted that when these deferred success persons are unable to cut it in a real world job they won’t be fired, but rather have deferred employment.
Naaah… they’ll be downsized, rightsized, outplaced, or encouraged to seek other opportunities. It’s not as though this kind of jargon is something new to education, y’know?
A long time ago, before anyone outside the radical left had ever heard the words “politically correct,” George Carlin had a routine about euphemistic language. “Smug greedy people,” he said, “think that if you change the name for the condition, you change the condition.”
It’s easier to say that no one “failed” than to keep them from failing.
This use of language predates both PC and George Carlin. George Orwell, in his book 1984, devoted a considerable portion to the concept that by controlling words and what they mean, you can control thought. In the language that was replacing English, Newspeak, it became impossible to express concepts like revolt, freedom, and other thoughts that Big Brother would frown on.
The current crop of statists believe that by avoiding the use of words like “fail”, they avoid failure. Of course, the opposite is true. By removing the stigma and consequences of failure, they make it more attractive, or at least less unattractive.
you fail, then you fail. i dont see what the problem is. not to be blunt, but if youre slow, then you have to get used to that fact. teach these kids their place for christs sake.
This may be lunacy, but it’s not yet policy or practice, unlike most of your stories. It’s simply a suggestion by one particular teacher’s union.
You see on American Idol how people sing and make a dick out of themselves, all because they never got told “Oi! You can’t sing”.. I think telling a kid they failed is good - it should act as a wake up call. Either “Ok I gotta do better here..” or “Ok.. maybe I gotta look at some other options”
The problem is, so they’d have you believe, some kids really honestly can’t handle failure.
But in reality, most kids in the English-speaking world are bred into a zombie culture where it’s cool to get bad marks and be an illiterate moron, while kids with good marks are deserving of a beating. No wonder India and China are going to take over the world - their kids believe in getting good marks.
This whole “deferred success” crap seems like an attempt to reinforce the modern student culture of mass enforced stupidity, when it would be better to wipe it out.
I suggest we simply give the teachers who belong to the PAT deferred salaries. We can hold them in escrow until all the deferred successes are actualized.
I do not believe this in issue of political correctness. But, it is about labeling theory an self fulfilling prophecy.