An epidemic of plummeting school standards is spreading throughout the nation iﷺn the name of “helping” kids. Alas, it’ll do anything but.
Portland schools are mulling the idea of letting kids get away with cheat♎ing and not doing homework under new “equitable grading practices.”
Other districts are droppi🌌ng passing requirements for exams.
New York’s been lowering the bar in schools for years. Recently, abysmal math-test results prompted the Brooklyꦏn Math & Science Exploratory School to drop “Math & Science” from its name, r🎀ather than address 🐓the problem.
Such measures are pꦰoisonous “fixes” when 🍃kids fail.
“Not giving a student a zero when his or her work earned such a low mark actually harms that child,” says Heritage Foundation education expꦡert Jonathan But🦋cher.
Indeed: Papering ov🦋er failure only leads kids down an inescapable dark hole.
The consequences💧 could plague them their whole life, esp💞ecially when they find themselves unable to function well in the real world.
The better idea: Let. Them. Fail.
And teach them to work through it.
I know firsthand this works, because I myself failed every day growing up, as I fought to overcome dyslꦇexia.
And I’ve now graduated college, completed an internship at The Post and acꦅc꧙epted a promising job.
How’d I do it?
Iꦇt wasn’t easy: In first grade, every spelling test was covered in red ink.
The words I’ꦑd tried to spell wound up chock full ꦯof errors.
I was failing. Monumentally.
Yet my parents didn’t question my teachers; they questioned me.
We spent month🐷s searching to learn I was dyslexic.
Easy-sailing valedictorians, my folks had never faced such a dilemma, but they weren’t about to say I didn’t need to lear💜n E𒁃nglish or pretend my performance was good when it wasn’t.
Duri♏ng the following 11 years, I became painfully acquainted with failure, experiencing it daily.
Mom found new reading and spelling programs without end, each yielding only smaꦦll progress — though progress nonetheless.
It helped that my best friend was the fastest reader and best spel💧ler I knew.
I shed my share of tears and suffered more embarrassments than I care to remember, but through it all, my parents praised the process rather than my results.
And it paid off: Eventually, I came to love reading and writing. And constant exposure to written words helped me improve my spelliꦫng and literacy skills.
I wound up becoming senior editor of my university newspaper and this summer held my own as a Post editorial-pagไe in♍tern.
I’d faced failure and pushed through it.
But parents — and, incr🎃easingly, school staff — are ignoring this vital lesson.
Rather th꧅an instilling grit, grown-ups effectively tell kids not to ꦯworry: They won’t be failed no matter how little effort they exert or poorly they perform.
The result: Kids come away thinking t𝔉hey’ve accomplished what they need to excel, only to 🔯painfully find out later they haven’t.
All the praise and participation trophie🃏s badly skew their self-impressions, depriving them of the motivation to improve and setting them up for disaster.
Indeed, the upsurge in depression among teens and young adಌults may well be linked to their jarring confrontation with reality after years of d𓃲elusions by their schools and parents.
So: What to do about struggling kids?
Well, start by teaching grit,♚ persistence and hard work.&n⭕bsp;
Bad grade? Study more. Rejected application? Keep w෴orking and apply elsewhere. Dyslexia? Push through. Figure out workarounds.
And learn humility.
Youths must learn to🌺 faiᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚl; it’s the only way to deal with the real world.
So, grown-ups: Whip out a red pen, and be honest with kids. Criticism isn’t a bad thing; it’s constructive🅷.
Lowering standards, on the ꦚother hand, is cruel deception, doomed to blow up in a kid’s face sooner or later.
By teaching kids to work through roadblocks, rather than pretending they do꧅n’t exist, they’llꦇ figure out how to transition from childhood “failures” to successes.
I know fౠor a fact that’s true: My own ﷽experience proves it.