One year, a vice principal at the high school where I worked pulled me aside and in confidence urged me to lower my standards so more students would pass my classes.
The the failure rate in my classroom sometimes reached 50% and was often hovering around 30%. Few earned ‘As’. Many earned ‘Ds’ and barely scrapped by. While I was being tough on grades and demanding of my students, many of my colleagues were not.
The reason why standards were low among most teachers was due to pressure from admisntration and parents who wanted their children to feel good about themselves—which means boosting self-esteem artificially.
- What the narrator leaves out is that the self-esteem movement started outside of the schools and spread to the schools like a virus. The schools were forced to comply or else. Source: Free Republic and Self-Esteem
However, wanting kids to have high self-esteem is a double-edged blade.
When I graded the lowest failing grades with a minus ( – ) sign showing that a student had done next to no work in class and no homework, I was called into the office by one of the other vice principals.
She ordered me with the threat of administrative action to drop the minus sign behind the failing grades, which I did.
She said, “They (the students) feel bad enough as it is. Why do you have to make it worse?”
– to be continued
Return to Speaking Out About Education – Part 1
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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