Oh Dear, He Failed...Hurray!

Realizing that the way I speak of my eldest son would lend one to think he would be up for Messiah of the Year Award, I wish to confirm that my boy is clearly on Tera Firma and has totally human feet. He is so human that he failed his math test today. What was surprising was his response to having failed the test.

In my experience, when a pupil fails a paper or test the first thing they look for is a scapegoat. In their mind this saves them from having to take the responsibility for their lack of preparation or concentration during the examination. It is a lot easier to blame the kid sitting next to/behind/in front of them for any and all problems. And we, as adults and teachers, allow them to get away with this behavior by not forcing them when necessary to take responsibility for their work.

If the pupil is unable to find a convenient scapegoat or is denied one by a teacher who is not willing to be the mug, what is displayed is anger, sometimes to the point of rage. How dare a teacher mark the paper in this manner? Who the hell do they think they are? I have been greeted more than once with these words and accompanying body language; however, my personal favourite is, "I'm going to get my dad on you and then you will be sorry!" I remember standing in one maths class and being told this. The school had in-class telephones, so I picked up the receiver and asked the boy for his dad's phone number. He backed down and proceeded to threaten me with the infamous "I know where you live". All this anger because the student felt, believed, or was taught somewhere along the line that you don't have to prepare for tests either in school or in life.

The third most common variation of behaviour is sullen silence. I do get worried with this one. The other two are easy, but this one does lend me to visions of children being beaten severely for bad test marks. I would like to deny that this happens, but unfortunately this is a trigger for abusive parents looking for a reason. Those pupils prone to sullen silence were invited to see me either after class or after school, lunch time or break time. We would talk the paper through and see if there was any way of salvaging a desperate situation. I do have to admit, I did get some improvement from these pupils.

So what did the boy do today that shocked me? He screamed that he wanted to resit the paper immediately before I had even marked it. The thing is that his "school room" is on a different floor of the house from where I was (doing the ironing). He brought me the paper and was crying harder than the last time he fell off his horse and nearly broke his leg. This near hysteria was from the fact that he had to take responsibility for failing that paper and none of the usual behavioral responses fit.

After nearly a half an hour of calming him down, I realized that we no longer allow our children to fail. Failing is now so taboo in our society that we go to extreme lengths to make sure that the developing young people never experience this -- until it is too late. Every so often I watch "The Apprentice". I see young and middle age people vying with each other for this coveted position. I can see the mistakes they are making and cringe because I know that Sir Alan will have them for toast. What is more interesting is the excuses they make for having failed. I have yet to see one of the contestants say, "Yes, I made of mess of it and he was right to fire me because I failed."

Failure is worthwhile. If you fail and keep your head, then you can actually learn something from the experience. Yes the idiots will say it is character building, but in truth it is intelligence building. It is not the successes that make the man but his failures and how he dealt with them. Back in the dark ages of the the 1980s I had a post graduate teaching position in an American university. I tried to fail a student in one of my classes and was immediately informed by my Department Head that I could do no such thing. His parents were major donors to the school. So I had a tough choice: my academic integrity or my PhD. What did the young man learn? That if you have enough money, then you never have to take responsibility for your actions.

Not having properly learned that one can not fail pupils, five years ago I tried again. I had another boy in my class who was not hopeless mathematically, he simply could not count, add, subtract, multiply or divide, and he did not care. His parents were insistent that he take the Higher OCR Maths Paper. There was no way that he could have passed it. I told my Head this. I told the School Governors this. In fact, I told them that the boy was failing and would be given an "F" grade for class and home work. I, in return, was told in no uncertain terms that the boy would not fail his math class because "we don't fail pupils at this school. It would cause untold psychological damage." The boy's result came back as a "U" and I took the heat for it.

So our children are not allowed to fail because of the psychological damage it will cause. We allow pupils to flow through the education system and teach them all the excuses they might need, but none the practicality that failing might. We teach them to blame others and not take responsibility for themselves. We don't show them with the little failures how to remedy the situation. And when they fail their GCSEs, A-Levels, university degrees and they are damaged to the point of suicide, we, the well meaning teachers of the world, ring our hands and wonder what went wrong.

So he failed today. Yet, he learned more about himself and world in that F than any top mark lecture or project could have taught him. And he knows that every failure has the chance to teach him what will be required of him in "The Real World".

He unexpectedly re-sat the test this afternoon when his brothers and sister came home from school. It was different paper but the same problem type. He didn't mess around or look for a reason to get out of it. He scored 19 out of 22.

And to this day, I hate being referred to as Dr.