Posted on 07/22/2005 1:30:31 AM PDT by NixonsAngryGhost
A child does not fail, but defers success
David Ward and Matthew Taylor Wednesday July 20, 2005 The Guardian
If your children come home with reports suggesting they have been asleep for most of the last school year, do not label them as failures. They have been merely "deferring success". Failure, says Liz Beattie, a retired primary school teacher, is a word that should be deleted from the classroom dictionary, because it can put children off learning. Mrs Beattie and a colleague will propose abolishing the f-word in a motion to be debated next week in Buxton, Derbyshire, at the conference of the Professional Association of Teachers. The motion reads: "Conference believes it is time to delete the word 'fail' from the educational vocabulary, to be replaced with the concept of 'deferred success'."
But others feel failure is as important for children as success - deferred or otherwise. "Everyone fails at some time in their lives and it is often in those circumstances that we learn the most," said Nick Seaton of the Campaign for Real Education.
Cool. We can fail to pay any teacher that goes along with it and call it a "deferred salary".
yeah, well, just like the "child" is going to have to "defer" a paycheck when he/she turns into a "deferred success" adult.
Failure isn't particularly damning for a person of character. Nobody can win every time. Sometimes a person is just off their game. I've succeeded a lot and failed a lot: both are valuable learning experiences and help people learn to cope with the real world.
Defer the rod, and your child will defer success.
As in Dumb Sh!t?
"Your son didn't learn anything this year, ma'am, I'll be DS'ing him."
And I'll be Deep Sixing the little DS until his grades show some improvement.
(My, but I'm insensitive!)
Whew.....
That's a relief.
I might be a success after all.
As a Private in the Army I was told that I put the "Suck in Sucksess" right after I failed to do enough pushups on a PT test.
I wish I could have told my Drill Instructor that I was deferring my success.
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