At this time of year there is a hard truth playing out at schools everywhere: Failure. As the end of year approaches, there are kids who are being told, “Sorry, you’ve failed”. At being eight years old. Understanding that failure is part of life, and can be used to learn and grow…the tragedy lies in the fact that many of these kids will be told they’ve failed, then moved on through the system – essentially set up for continual failure.
This topic brought to you by my sister-in-law who has a degree in communicative disorders, and works in the public school system as a speech-language pathology assistant. Down in the trenches – she sees this occur…citing a third-grader she worked with this year who has been failed, yet moved up to fourth-grade to continue “with limited help and resources, leagues behind her peers”. She says, “I love this kid and my heart breaks for her. Not able to read and moving on to fourth-grade is NOT OK. What is being reinforced is that she doesn’t need to try or work hard because she’ll be moved along regardless”.
I’ll tell ya…this is the same thing that started to happen to my own kids…same thing, different reasons – I talk about exactly this in the beginning chapters of the book – it’s a big part of my decision to yank ’em out of the public system.
Doing school at home is NOT a magical cure-all. However, it can be a way to focus all the attention needed – all the resources and effort poured into your kid so he can LEARN from the failure, and move forward only when ready. Set up for future success – just at a different pace 🙂
I love this❤️. Every kid is different, learns different, has different strengths and weaknesses. I also saw so much of the, just pushing kids through the system, while working in a school. Heartbreaking.