Very Small Doses has posted an interesting story reported by yahoo news. Ok, so it’s not as interesting as “bang your head against the wall for 5 minutes” type of story.
The word “fail” should be banned from use in classrooms and replaced with the phrase “deferred success” to avoid demoralising pupils, a group of teachers has proposed.
I really don’t know if this is funny or tragic. What does “differed success” actually mean? No one likes to fail, but I think this is just pushing it. And I can’t imagine this entering the common vernacular.
“What did you get on the test Bobby?”
“I got differed success.”
That doesn’t seem to work, does it? I think something like this actually could be harmful in a way. It kinfoff implies that there will be unlimited number of future occasions to succeed – which is unrealistic. When you fail, you are forced to face the fact that you messed up, take responsibility for your action and face consequences. When your success is “differed” you simply assume you will get a do-over at some point. In real life situations we all need to deal with failure at one time or another. I think that sheltering school kids from this kind of experiences is a bad idea.
This reminds me of two problems with arising from the word “Retard” and the many phrases that have been invented to replace it.
1) Kids aren’t stupid. When I was in elementary school, they had replaced “retard” with “mentally handicapped” or something along those lines. But, everyone just used the new phrase as an insult, in the exact same way as they would have used “retard.” It might have confused people for a week or so, but in the end, nothing changed, and they ended up changing the standard work again a few years later.
2) Now, the hip word to refer to child with problems is “developmentally delayed.” The problems is a lot of parents don’t really get what it means. They think “delayed, great, he’ll catch up in a few years.” But really, the kids are going to be behind their peers forever. It cushions peoples emotions at first and then ends up crushing them later.
Wow.. I actually haven’t heard anyone ever saying “developmentally delayed” in a conversation yet. LOL That is hilarious.
“Epic Deferred Success!” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.