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Confused Canadian

Joined: 21 Jan 2003
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Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:14 am Post subject: The day I quit teaching.... |
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...is the day this comes into effect...
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Get ready to e-mail this one to your friends...
Wed Jul 20, 9:02 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - The word "fail" should be banned from use in British classrooms and replaced with the phrase "deferred success" to avoid demoralizing pupils, a group of teachers has proposed.
Members of the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) argue that telling pupils they have failed can put them off learning for life.
A spokesman for the group said it wanted to avoid labeling children. "We recognize that children do not necessarily achieve success first time," he said.
"But I recognize that we can't just strike a word from the dictionary," he said.
The PAT said it would debate the proposal at a conference next week. |
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=583&e=1&u=/nm/20050720/od_nm/britain_failure_dc |
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Gopher

Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:23 am Post subject: |
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The PC people are coming back? *beep*. |
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Harpeau
Joined: 01 Feb 2003 Location: Coquitlam, BC
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Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:26 am Post subject: |
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F stand for FEEDBACK which is You failed ou stupid lazy idiot!!
Just kidding.  |
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Bulsajo

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:33 am Post subject: |
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Deferred Success?
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time!
Another entry for the Newspeak dictionary! |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994
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Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:47 am Post subject: |
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This is as good as the one recently about ordering all teachers to start using purple ink instead of red ink to mark papers...as if kids are so stupid they can't figure out the meaning.
"Woe is me. My paper is covered in purple ink so I am a victim of deferred success." |
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jajdude
Joined: 18 Jan 2003
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Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:32 am Post subject: |
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LOL
It's not poverty: just deferred wealth! |
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Qinella
Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Location: the crib
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Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:52 am Post subject: |
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It's not stupidity, it's deferred kangaloos! |
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Bulsajo

Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:00 pm Post subject: |
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Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
"Woe is me. My paper is covered in purple ink so I am a victim of deferred success." |
Now THAT is quote-in-signature-field material. |
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VanIslander

Joined: 18 Aug 2003 Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 5:27 pm Post subject: |
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The teachers want to avoid being seen as having failed themselves to teach the students.
A "fail" is a wake-up call to the parents and the teachers and is a dreaded designation which motivates average students to keep up the effort and give them some satisfaction when they "pass" a course.
Gopher wrote: |
The PC people are coming back? |
Please. It's not about being politically correct. I'm all for doing away with terms people find offensive and which encourages wrongful discrimination, or at least using enough tact not to use such terms in the workplace.
But to do away with the very idea of having failed/passed is absurd, and irresponsible. Do your job teachers. Few students fail entirely due to their own actions. Large class sizes, reduced teacher one-on-one tutoring and the disappearance of homework loads all contribute, as does individual teacher efforts.
But then again, many of us teaching ESL here in Korea can't fail our students, either because we're in hagwons which aren't structured that way, or else are in institutions which discourage the failing of students.
So, maybe there's something to the idea of not holding back a student a year, and the shame it brings. But to try to change "fail" to "deferred success" is premature and the term itself a lark. It sounds like a kind of success, when we know it's not any kind of success. They should chose a term which isn't about pass/fail, success/fail, but instead is neutral, alternatively conceived, like giving a suspended sentence instead of jail time, maybe a term like "unfinished", "continued", etc. |
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