The Failure of Schools without Failure.
Robert L. Ebel · Phi Delta Kappan · 1980
The word used in relation to pupil progress usually means lack of success in passing a course or gaining pro motion to the next But it can also mean lack of satisfactory progress in learning. The two meanings are related, but they are not identical. The first is de termined by school policy as well as by pupil achievement in learning. The second is solely a matter of achievement. Some have adopted policies that virtually eliminate of the first kind. Elementary school pupils may be promoted from to almost automatically, regardless of achievement in learning. Secondary school students who have learned little in a course may nevertheless be given a passing and receive academic credit for it. Schools that carry out such policies are the schools without failure I refer to in the title of this article. The second kind of failure, lack of satisfactory progress in learning, has not been eliminated. Given the differences among individuals in personality, in terests, ability, and motivation, it proba bly never can be eliminated. But if teach ers do not use of the first kind to report of the second kind, they will allow pupils to fail who ought not to fail. The purpose of this article is to elaborate and defend the thesis that the well-in tended attempt to develop without has had the unintended side effect of increasing tolerance for, and the in cidence of, lack of progress in learning. How did this situation develop? It did not exist in the early decades of this cen tury. At that time to learn satis factorily in one usually led to to be promoted to the next Deci sions to pass or fail a pupil were made near the end of the school year, and they were recorded on report cards the pupils carried home with them: Promoted to the fifth grade or Required to repeat the fourth grade. Thus as the pupils escaped from school to go home for the summer vacation, the most frequent ques tion they asked of each other was, Did you pass? Most pupils passed. A few did not. Promotion in those days was not automatic. As a result of these policies, there were over-age pupils in nearly every A few might be several years over age. These were the conspicuous dumbbells, over sized, undervalued, frustrated, unhappy, and sometimes aggressive. Leonard Ayer s described their plight in his book, Lag gards in Our Schools.1 At about the same time, researchers began to document what teachers had long suspected. Pupils re peating a often learned little more the second time through than they had in the first. Nor did the teachers enjoy a sec ond year of struggle with the same prob lems that had vexed them the first year. Moreover, after the first quarter of this century, emphasis in education shifted away from things to be learned and to ward conditions for learning, from prod ucts to processes, from subjects to chil dren. The objectives of this new child centered education turned out to be con siderably more variable and diffuse, less clearly definable, less amenable to objec tive assessment, than the older subject matter objectives had been. It became more difficult to distinguish from success in learning, more difficult to make and to defend decisions to retain a pupil in For all of these reasons, and re tention lost favor. They were replaced by automatic or promotion. Keep children with their age-mates was the slogan. Do what is best for the individu al child. But what of the other members of the class? Removal of the threat pf failure, and of the stigma associated with it, also removed an important incentive for work to avoid failure. In the early decades of the century, failing to learn made a real difference ? an obvious, important dif ference ? to pupils and to their families. Pupils worked for the social as well as for the personal rewards of learning. It is somewhat ironic that social promotion removed the only obvious, immediate social reward for achievement in learning. Humanistic educators often argue that the threat of failure, or the experience of it, are ineffective motivators. They refer to many studies that show that pupil efforts to learn are motivated by success, not by failure. Surely it is well known that pupils who succeed in learning are likely to pursue future learning more eagerly than pupils who have failed. From this the humanists conclude that school failures ought to be abolished. There are three reasons for questioning the soundness of this conclusion.