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Cicero is aghast. No surprise there then.
You may have seen or heard about the letter sent by a
primary school to its kiddy-winkles along with their SAT results. If you have
not seen or heard about this, where have you been? According to Cicero’s
sources the letter has like the Black Death and Spanish Flu swept everyone along in its
path and gone viral. (
Given the praise that has been lavished on it you would think it was a newly discovered letter of Pliny rather than a note from a teacher
to her kiddies.
And the purpose of this wee note? To let her brood know that
it was not the results from the tests that made her weans ‘special and unique’.That her kids were more than their SAT result. In other words the results from the tests didn’t matter. Failure was
permissible.
It is precisely this no ambition, no expectation attitude
that is undermining this country and holding it back.
Misplaced confidence like this in the end makes
people look foolish. The cotton-wool world created by this people where no-one
fails is why we have a generation with few skills and an expectation that
things are handed to them on a plate.
Is it any wonder with that kind of attitude that we loiter
near the bottom of most league tables for educational attainment?
And it is so so depressing that so so many people think it
ok to share such an attitude.
Cicero has even heard of under-graduates who are being
forced to spend the summer visiting the library to ‘better their marks’. No.
You failed your exams and you are having to re-sit. We do not need euphemisms
to hide this fact.
And it is a similar attitude that means sports competitions
are often neutered and rendered meaningless because no one must be seen to
lose; why a local newspaper has stopped printing children’s football league
tables so as not to heap humiliation on those at the bottom; and schools sports
days are a joke.
It is a wonder with this attitude that we won anything at
the Olympics. But of course there we were significantly helped there by the
disproportionate number of athletes educated at elite schools where you pay for
the privilege of being first, last and anything in between.
Failure should be embraced. Not hidden away from. It breeds
winners, resilience and bounce-back-ability. Skills we surely want the
generation that is going to pay our pensions to have in abundance. This is the way
to succeed.
And it gives a kick up in the arse to those who failed to pull their finger out for their SATS, A Levels or degrees.
And this is why it is so wrong for trendy-lefty trained
educators to declare publicly and with great gusto that it is ok to fail.
This is nonsense.
Have a great day.
Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.
