I’ve never even understood grading student work before fourth or even grade. At least not in the manner we do in most schools. In the early years, too many students are assumed to have limits they might not have.

Early childhood education was not the topic of the original post. College was. Prof. Chew’s posting was about college and people making excuses for manipulating the admissions system. It is about people trying to reduce what is expected of them: students who tell me, “I can’t do that because…” and “I have disabilities, so you can’t expect….”

Oh, yes I can expect. You earn a grade from me, I don’t hand them out and weigh them based on particular hardships.

But, young adults and even many teenagers do fail. They let themselves assume failure is normal and they surrender. Or, worse, systems teach them that failure is not only acceptable, but never their fault.

I spend the day with an African-American political scientist. He was commenting on the students he meets who begin the year with a long list of why the university shouldn’t expect much of them. That’s just sad and even disturbing.

He recruits for the university, trying to convince students that “destiny” is not pre-ordained by circumstances.

I know my students can succeed. They need to stop imagining they cannot. Will project fail? Yes. Will labs fail? Sometimes with spectacular results.

I’ve walked out of courses, away from jobs, and risked everything more than once in my life. Risk involves a sense that failure is not inevitable — that you *might* fail, but that’s never a certainty.

I considered that you might be saying in a general sense that failure is not acceptable, as in giving in or giving up. That may be something different.

I’ve had many failures. Some were learning experiences, other were simply unavoidable. Some I can learn from directly to alter my choices, others simply remind me that things go wrong in life.

As someone in business for myself, some ideas have worked for a time, others have been dramatic failures — costing very real money. I don’t get to tell vendors I had a “learning opportunity” with cash flow. No, I’ve made analytical mistakes or the unexpected external event changed the equations.

What we need to remind everyone is that failures, lost games, honest mistakes, and the like are generally (generally) not life threatening. You study the results of loses for a reason, to analyze what happened.

When software goes bad, you study why. When a game is lost, you review game films. When I have a problem with a lesson/assignment, I review what I could improve as a teacher.

It’s not a learning opportunity when someone “fails” to drive safely. It’s not a learning opportunity (at least not for the fireman or diver) when someone fails to check air tanks. My father worked in critical care and ICU for 35 years. Mistakes in ICU are failures. Serious failures (followed by lawsuits, of course).

Sorry, the doctor who injured me at birth failed. I wasn’t a learning opportunity.

But, nothing I do involves risking lives. If I make a mistake while studying autism or learning pedagogies, I get to learn from failures. If I fail in business, I rethink the next plan.

No games with the language. I call it what it is: a bad lecture, a failed assignment design, or a poor business plan.

Some failures are “my fault” and I assume responsibility for them. I apologize if anyone else is affected, pick up the pieces, and analyze what can be learned. Such is most of life.

As for rigid… I like rigid. I like definite, clear, precise judgment. I don’t do grey areas (have tried to understand them, though) and have learned to live with my brain functioning as it does. Then again, maybe this is one more thing people can claim is “broken” about my mind.

Personally, I think it is a strength that if I don’t make it up a trail I go back and exercise more. I look for alternative ways to solve problems when my arm or leg is a “challenge” to overcome. I don’t accept any limits beyond those I know are natural: I won’t win a sprint, so my goal is adjusted to finishing the course.

As for the students I meet, I tell them to take more responsibility and in return most faculty will work more with them. Don’t make demands, ask how to work with professors and departments. Avoiding conflict can reduce failure, in business and in education.

“I’ve always been aware of being different—-was always “the different girl” (because of being Chinese) at school. It was a good preparation for life with Charlie!”

That’s nice. I so better understand your position now.

thank you for the thanks——I used to wonder what words other kids were making up to rhyme with my last name, which rhymes with lots of words that kids, and adults too I suppose, like to fling at each other.

We take a page out of Precision Teaching’s book and don’t call them failures, but learning opportunities, in order to call attention to the next step in the process. It helps takes the implications of blame and finality out of the equation, at least as I see it.

To quote a sappy movie with a statement that I happen to agree with–“every minute is another opportunity to turn it around”.

Yeah, I was originally diagnosed with Asperger’s, and since I had high test scores, it was assumed that I was very “mildly affected” or something. Never mind that speech shutting down is pretty common, or that self-injury was a near daily occurrance until maybe 17, or that my difficulties understanding instructions cause cooking microwave foods to be a long and difficult process, and that I need a lot of prompting to get ready in the morning for school or it could easily take 3 or 4 hours, even when I’ve gotten plenty of sleep. I start college in a month, and I’ve just started to take the bus by myself.

Yet, the director of special services didn’t listen when my parents and I raised these issues, and it wasn’t until the IQ scores came back low that they changed their tune from “no more difficulty than any normal teenager” (March IEP meeting) to “oh, gee, we’d be real concerned about her living alone at college” (May IEP meeting). Then, even though they knew I was going to college, they didn’t provide any reports or referrals or resources or advice or ANYTHING, and we had to e-mail the superintendent repeatedly in order to get just the reports, which were mailed out in mid-July, and we’re yet to have an appointment with the autism specialists that was supposed to occur in June, but nobody contacted us about it since May.

Apparently they are so convinced about people with the Asperger dx being “very mildly affected” that they are trying to switch the diagnosis to classic autism, which while it does fit me, it’s kind of on the brink (my language development was atypical, and while I was talking it was echolalia, but it’s unclear when I developed non-echolalic phrase speech, and the delay couldn’t have been much or my parents would remember it as such, though their memories are pretty fuzzy about these things, especially since autism runs in the family and a lot of traits like echolalia and headbanging were perceived as totally normal), and it disturbs me that the special ed staff are so terribly rigid in their perceptions of people they are supposed to serve.

And as for parents “pushing for inappropriate ASC diagnoses” – well I can say that’s certainly not the case here, and for the vast majority of people (I haven’t personally heard of someone doing this). In fact, while my parents requested an evaluation (so my records for college would be current), it was the school officials who were emphasizing a different spectrum diagnosis, while my parents couldn’t care less which diagnosis – it’s all autism anyway, just different traits/skills combinations. In fact, they gave out behavioral evaluations, three to teachers and one to my parents, and while the ones the teachers filled out all indicated “High Functioning Autism”, the one my parents filled out, didn’t apparently (which seems to have to do with how my parents perceive my social behavior differently from others – so what most people would see as aloof and uncommunicative, my parents perceive differently, especially my dad who is also autistic). So anyone who would try to tell me that we were trying to push for an inappropriate diagnosis, I would show how clearly wrong they must be. Besides, nobody has provided any help or options or resources, no kind of training to help me live independently – they just basically said, “well, I wouldn’t be comfortable with her living on her own” and say “goodbye” and don’t even give us test results or anything! Really, if at all possible, I’d do whatever I have to in order to avoid this kind of runaround. WHY on earth would anyone think people would subject themselves to the overwhelming bureaucracy and all this, just for what? A paper with a diagnosis, and taking tests in a separate room? Speech therapy to learn idioms you already know? Come on.