HARDING: The massive failure of no-fail

Lee Harding is a freelance reporter and frequent contributor to the Western Standard. He has put his reporting on hold while he pursues election to the Regina Public School Board.Schools should encourage achievement, not foster mediocrity. I have carried that conviction to the doors in a candidacy for Regina Public School Board, and found that idea resonates with most people.More than 20 years ago, Regina Public Schools (RPS) decided to implement a no-fail policy for elementary school students. This idea has found acceptance in some circles for two reasons. One is that by educating a child an extra year, they take more tax dollars over their educational lifetime. The larger pretence is to protect children’s self-esteem.It is indeed a tough pill to swallow for a student to watch his friends advance while he stays behind. However, it’s worse for a student to participate in a school system without standards and emerge from it years later without knowledge. The result is an uneducated adult handicapped at pursuing more education or gainful employment. And how is their self-esteem then?How hard will a student work if they know it really doesn’t matter what they do–or don’t do? Not only is the course material lost on the student, but so are formative lessons about work ethic and the reality of consequences for our choices.Instead, the “reward” of a passing grade comes automatically, just as the salaries were for laborers in the Soviet Bloc before it shed Communism. “Whether you sit down or you stand erect, 1000 zlotys you expect,” the miners used to say in Communist Poland. Equality for everyone denied advancement for anyone. The result was mediocrity where productivity was not rewarded, nor sloth punished.The dynamic is the same for students when everyone gets participant ribbons but no one gets a prize for first, or when students get passed automatically but no one gets acknowledged for student achievement (lest a non-achiever feel bad).One mother I met told me her son had floundered at math in Grade 4. She got letters throughout the year telling her that her son just didn’t get it. Regardless, at the end of the year, he was passed to Grade 5. The report card literally congratulated her son on his “achievement.” This was no achievement at all. It was automatic.One former teacher, who retired in 2004, told me the no-fail policy was implemented before she retired. She recalled one of her students who only attended school 12 days during the school year. The principal ordered her to pass the student.People taking lessons to swim or do martial arts don’t get passed to the next level until they have accomplished the requirements of the current one. That only makes sense because the learner is not ready for advancement. No-fail schools that take a different approach ignore this at students’ peril.The unduly passed child, unable to meet the challenge of the previous year, feels increasingly lost in the second year and successive ones. Sometimes a good teacher is able to pull them up, but without some kind of intervention, the child falls to greater failure.The student disengages, feeling increasingly stupid as the years pass–made to sit in class long after they even stopped trying to understand. The classroom becomes a quiet torture chamber, as the student, made painfully aware of their own inability, watches their self-esteem plummet. How ironic.This predictable set of consequences has, unfortunately, been confirmed many times at campaign doors. One day I happened upon three people smoking weed at a corner house. As I explained the problems of no-fail, a man roughly 50 years old said, “I grew up in Ontario and that’s what they did to me. I can’t read or write.”Down the block a mother told me how she asked her son’s school to hold him back in Grade 4. The principal refused and said that would not be possible. After the student finished grade 9, he quit. Grade 10, the first time failure was possible, was a challenge he knew he wasn’t up for.One special learning teacher explained to me, “They can’t really fail until Grade 10. And when they do, they are so surprised. They get 20% and they can’t believe it.”No wonder they are surprised. They have been shielded from consequence their entire young lives. Then reality hits them hard.Some parents recognize the inherent harm of the no-fail policy so clearly, they will consciously avoid a school system that has it. One grandmother told me how the no-fail policy actually robbed her of the expected joy of seeing her grandchildren regularly.Her son and his spouse and children moved to Regina from PEI with their spouse and children. Their young daughter had just failed Grade 4, so they registered her in Grade 4. The Regina school said no, that would not be honoured, and this child would be put in Grade 5. This prompted them to move back to PEI before school began.It’s remarkable how parents who value their children’s education will move cross-country to avoid a pitfall that educated school administrators care little about. Sadly, many bad ideas prevail in education and this generation’s children pay the price. Lee Harding is a freelance reporter and frequent contributor to the Western Standard. He has put his reporting on hold while he pursues election to the Regina Public School Board.

HARDING: The massive failure of no-fail

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