Disadvantages of letting failing students pass to the next grade

Can you imagine our lives without failing? Obviously, you will feel fantastic and comfortable at first. That’s what everyone does. But if you think deeply, I bet that the first thing comes to your mind is ’how will I learn if I’m successful in everything?’. Well, there are many good examples of people used their failure as an inspiration. For instance, Sir Isaac Newton failed at school. But he went on and become one of the greatest scientists of all time. In addition, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft Corporation, dropped out of Harvard University in 1975. Surprisingly, his fortune now is £60. 3 billion. However, I strongly disagree that the government should allow failing students to pass to the next grade as it has many negative consequences and effects in student’s future life accomplishments, evaluation, and inner self.

First of all, passing failed students won’t let them develop their skills and performances to handle the different demands of university and work according to (Ourkids. net, 2018). As they will be incapable to do a professional plan to continue forward in their jobs or important roles in life. Furthermore, the F student will have major obstacles dealing with life requirements as he has less knowledge and accurate data than an A student who uses different skills that he developed at school in appropriate ways to achieve his goals. My brother thinks that every grade at school is linked to the next one, so you will be required to know and understand everything about the subject you studied before moving to more complicated ideas and objectives in that subject. Otherwise, you will end up with another failure. Consequently, the community will have more unprepared students for the real life.

As evidence, (Thebusinessofschoolblog. com, 2018) published the latest vote for New York City appears that more than two-thirds of graduated students from high schools are not qualified to attend college. Moreover, passing students without failing them means tests are useless at schools. And that’s wrong, the definition of tests in Merriam-Webster dictionary is “ a series of questions or exercises for measuring the skill, knowledge, intelligence, capacities, or aptitudes of an individual or group” (C. Zwaagstra, A. Clifton and C. Long, 2010). Simply, tests are tools to evaluate student’s understanding and developing in a specific subject. In fact, tests are the only thing that shows students’ academic levels, achievements and their progress in learning the mandated curriculum. These tests help teachers also to discover more about student’s academic levels and personality which can be useful in the evaluation process and choose the right teaching strategy for better learning.

As you can see around that everything in your life is evaluated by a number of different types of tests to prove your qualification and eligibility for a specific thing. For example, you have to do both written and driving tests to have a driver license and drive a car yourself. Most parents believe that these tests are the evidence of how their children doing at school and how successful are they in certain subjects and their weak points that they should work on. Therefore, allowing pupils to pass even if they failed won’t help both parents and teachers achieving their purposes. Another important reason is that students will not study anymore indeed! I am a student and I know exactly how it feels when they allow all students to pass easily.

First of all, they will have less motivation and desire to succeed because there is no difference between an excellent student and a failed student. Secondly, it will affect their attitude at school as they will behave badly in various ways such as running out of school, not respecting teachers and classmates, not following instructions and strategies of learning and studying and last but not least, braking out the rules. Thus, It will cause academic neglect and indifference in student’s personality. And that’s why I highly recommend that people with this decision should rethink and see it from another perspective because their argument still flawed even if it is acceptable in some cases like financial problems and children’s depression. But if they allowed it, they will destroy student’s purposes and grits and these two are the most effective elements in the progress to succeed in student’s inner self. Most of the pupils cannot achieve anything without a purpose.

However, keeping the criteria to succeed in schools will grow up their assertion and motivation. (C. Zwaagstra, A. Clifton and C. Long, 2010) explained that students realize how much successful they are when they are competing as they practice before to raise their abilities and that is simply called ‘ grit’. Grit is a mixed combination between determination, indomitable spirit and ambitious character. Angela Lee Duckworth in TED show(2013) described grit as “ it is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint…. we need to measure whether we’ve been successful and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned. In other words, we need to be gritty”. Based on what she said, conduct is way too better than actual intelligence in passing and failing in life. In conclusion, I really don’t think it’s a good idea that authorities should legalize passing students with low degrees to the following grade because that will not help in improving their overall performance in life. Every student must work hard and reject failure because I if they didn’t, it will hunt them again and again. So, failure is the only way to learn from your previous mistakes and barriers I am strongly convinced and without a doubt that “ tough situations build strong people”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

C. Zwaagstra, M., A. Clifton, R. and C. Long, J. (2010). What’s Wrong with Our Schools: and How We Can Fix Them. United Kingdom: R&L Education, p. 29.

C. Zwaagstra, M., A. Clifton, R. and C. Long, J. (2010). What’s Wrong with Our Schools: and How We Can Fix Them. United Kingdom: R&L Education, p. 36.

Ourkids. net. (2018). How Schools Fail Kids by Not Failing Them. [online] Available at: http://www. ourkids. net/blog/michael-zwaagstra-speech-why-schools-are-failing-kids-by-not-failing-them-7364 [Accessed 23 Jul. 2018].

Thebusinessofschoolblog. com. (2018). DO YOU PASS FAILING STUDENTS? | The Business of School. [online] Available at: http://thebusinessofschoolblog. com/? p= 802 [Accessed 23 Jul. 2018].

Lee Borchardt, L. (1989). The Quick Fix: Who Is the Successful Student?. College Teaching, [online] 37(4), p. 138. Available at: https://www. jstor. org/stable/27558363? seq= 1#page_scan_tab_contents [Accessed 23 Jul. 2018].