"Most of you are going to fail this class."

Is it a challenge or an excuse?

Originally published in the Moultrie News.

At the beginning of the year, the teacher of an 8th-grade honors class informed her students that most of them would fail. Was this to challenge the students not to fail or an excuse to account for the teacher's poor ability? Does it set the right tone?

There are many possible reasons for this approach, but we can immediately eliminate the teacher covering for her poor ability. Nobody fails a bad teacher’s class; everyone passes, usually without effort. Failing students usually results in parental and administrative blowback and requires a great deal of justification from the teacher; bad teachers want no part of those hassles. Also, bad teachers usually wish to be adored, and in their (incorrect) view, the quickest path to popularity is juxtaposing themselves against the tough teachers.

So there must be another reason. Let’s consider the possibilities:

As you suggest, the teacher may have said it to challenge and motivate her students. If so, it probably won’t work very well on the snowflake generation. Today’s kids are more likely to crumple under an implied challenge than conquer it.

It’s an honors course, so the teacher may have been nudging students to drop the class to render it more manageable. Parents who view their children as more talented than they actually are usually find a way to get them into the highest classes even though they’re not developmentally ready. (It doesn’t help that we call classes “Honors” as if it’s a reward; “Accelerated” would be more accurate.)

In some schools, these over-riders can make up fully half the roll while grade inflation lets in another unmerited third. Thus, on day one, you’ve got an “Accelerated” class where only a handful of kids are truly accelerated. Teachers may try to scare kids who don’t really belong back into a more appropriate class with threats of failure.

This may be a scare tactic, but it may also be somewhat true. If the teacher insists on adhering to a rigorous accelerated curriculum rather than watering it down to accommodate improperly-placed students, she may indeed have a high failure rate.

Most likely, the teacher’s comment was simply an exaggeration to make a point. “Most” of the students are not going to fail. She just wants the kids to realize they’re part of an elite class with high expectations and should prepare themselves for a year of hard work.

Unfortunately for the teacher, some students are adept at weaponizing such rhetoric for their own gain — especially if their parents have bought into the contemporary ethos of labeling themselves (and their children) as victims while tagging anyone who tells them no as villains.

How does this profit the student? It might compel the parents to get the child out of a tough teacher’s class. Failing that, it primes parents to accept the mediocre outcomes of the child’s mediocre efforts without ascribing any responsibility to the child. “Of course I’m doing bad in the class, Mom,” says the student. “She told us we were going to fail from the beginning!”

That’s where we can concede the teacher might have set a more beneficial tone. Would it be better for her to come in with soft soap like, “I know you’re all going to do wonderfully this year!”? That would certainly set a positive mood, but also a false one because it’s never true. So it’s probably best just to keep things real. “I believe every student who works hard will do very well this year,” or something to that effect would set the stage cleanly.

Regardless of why the teacher said it, the real question is how should a parent respond. In general, it’s best to empower the child. If my son or daughter told me on the first day, “Mrs. So-and-So said half the class is going to fail!” my response would have been, "That's a shame. Good thing it won’t be you. Better get started on your homework."

Read the original column here.