Teaching group to consider banning word "fail"; replace with "deferred success"

[Gabu]

I see that these teachers have decided to defer their success in identifying what they should be spending their time on.

[Gabu]

Now have they ever thought about the word success' self-esteem? I mean now it's so confident but wait until it reminds people of failure because everything you fail at is deferred success. This word's view of itself is going to go way down

Seriously though, its the same thing. Deferred Success=failure... It is just foolish to change this.

Yes, I would agree.  Honestly, while we obviously shouldn't completely ignore students struggling, I can't help but feel like we're ignoring the students who do well in lieu of giving special treatment for those who don't and that our priorities are slightly lopsided, to say the least.

[Gabu]

The High School I attended actually had two different failing grades: E and F.  However the E wasn't assigned just as a feel good.  Students who made E's were allowed to make up the course in summer achool.  An F meant that you needed to take it over from scratch if you wanted credit for the course.

My school had something similar.  An F meant a loss of credit (-1 on the GPA) and it may not be made up in summer school.  It indicated a lack of effort.

Yes, my university has something like that as well.  If you get between 40% and 49% in a course, or if your professor allows it due to exceptional circumstances, you get an E, which is still a fail, but you can get credit for the course by simply writing the final exam again (an different one than what you previously wrote, obviously) and passing with a high enough score that it bumps your mark above 50%.  If you get below 40% and your professor knows very well that it's just because you have no clue what you're doing, then you get an F and have to take the entire course over again.

[Gabu]

My school actually has standards.  None of this rewriting the exam crap if you didn't get 50%.  We need 50% to get the credit, and need to maintain a 60% average.  If you get a 49, you failed, don't get the credit, don't get to retake the exam (should have studied!), and you have to do the course again.  Additionally, you also get a "course failed" on your report and the maximum we're allowed to fail is 2 before they kick us out.

None of this pity crap.

If you think about it, it actually makes sense for a university to do it the way I described.  If you allow a student to retake a course over and over and over until he succeeds, he has to pay the money for that course every single time, so you're essentially getting a lot more money from him than you normally would.  Even simply taking the exam again means you have to shell out money, and if you fail the exam again, then you have to take the course over again, which is even more money out of his pocket.

Plus, on the student's side, for students who honestly did know the material and who did well in the rest of the course, and who were perhaps just having a really bad day on the day of the exam or something (you have to pass the exam to pass the course, even if you got 100% in the course), it really doesn't seem that fair to make the student take the entire course again when the only stumbling block was the final exam.

While I agree with you that we shouldn't excessively pamper students who aren't doing so hot, I can't say I agree with your idea that schools and universities should be some sort of military setting where you're harshly punished and even taken close to being fully ejected the moment you step out of line.  Some people are simply slackers who want the world handed to them, yes, but some people honestly do just have a hard time, and I really don't think we should be treating both groups in exactly the same harsh manner.