more PC bullshit in schools

I wouldn't even believe it if it wasn't from reuters because it's so pointless and idiotic. One of the main reasons why I hated sociology was because it's full fo do gooder bullshit ideas like this....


http://reuters.excite.com//article/2...AILURE-DC.html

LONDON (Reuters) - The word "fail" should be banned from use in British classrooms and replaced with the phrase "deferred success" to avoid demoralizing pupils, a group of teachers has proposed.

Members of the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) argue that telling pupils they have 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.

"But I recognize that we can't just strike a word from the dictionary," he said.

The PAT said it would debate the proposal at a conference next week

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demoralising? I'd be more demoralised if my peers thought I wasn't able to cope with something like failing a test than actually failing it.

the opposite of passing is failing, if you do not pass something, you fail..... i don't think many kids lock themselves in a room for weeks because they get told they've failed a test or exam and I doubt changing it to deferred success (which isn't necesarilly true when someone might constantly fail, sorry i mean defer success) is going to make someone go... hmmm if my sucess is deferred then i should just work a bit harder next time.

This place is turning into a ****ing disney cartoon man.

no comments or thoughts?

apparently it's so newsworthy they've had it on the bbc 6 and 9 o clock news.

thnklfully the education minister has said it's alot of bollocks and won't be considered

pfffff... what will they think of next? banning exams?

as far as I know, they're phasing out tests (not even exams) but tests in college "to give a fairer indication of a pupils abilities and progress"

ie they say it's not fair if someone passes all their course work and everything but fails an exam at the end of the year. Total bollocks IMO. Coursework, essays etc... are easy I mean the only people Ive known to fail course work in the 3 years since Ive left school are the people who didnt do it, handed it in late and dropped marks or didnt start till the night before it was due.

Getting 6+ weeks to read up on somethign and do a coupla thousand words doesn't show an in depth knowledge of the subject, an exam covering everything at least goes much further to achieving that.

Anyways, point being, as soon as they phase out tests in colleges I really can't see it being a much bigger step before school exams are gone.

You hit the nail on the head here Jim. PC bullsh*t. Seems feeling good is more important than education these days.

Adrian

I wonder how I and many others ever survived with the stuff they are wanting to ban nowadays.. I mean really this is stupid!!!

err what? where did they say education was not important? i cant really see how replacing a word is going affect education negatively.


jims going off on some tangent about phasing out tests- SO WHAT IF THEY DO? we have tests regularly but the bmedsci students only have one set of exams at the end of the year- does that mean their education is being comprimised? like hell it is

comprOmised

what I was pointing out is that end of year exams are being phased out in exchange for tests throughout the year. It's much easier to pass a test every once in a while on the past month or 2s content than actually having to have a good bit of knowledge about the full year of work for end of year exams.

If they're going to stop using the word fail because it might upset some kids then it's only a short step away from phasing out exams completely because they're stressful.

Quite frankly, phasing out a word (and this is definitely NOT going to be the only one, if "fail" goes, other negative words are sure to follow) is going to negatively impact education. Maybe it's not the slippery slope towards phasing out all testing, maybe it is, it doesn't matter. If you can't hold students to some standard of performance (or have to handle them with kid gloves when they fail to meet it), education will become a farce. How are these kids going to react when they get out into the world of work and expect to be able to fail without consequences or at the very least, without being told they fail?

You're going to wind up with a generation of citizens who A.Don't understand the language or the concepts behind it properly and B.Are handicapped by 12 years of feel-good-ism.

Adrian