Reverse Pressure: The Pressure to Fail

Posted in Standards and EvaluationStudentsTeaching on Jan 10, 2010 - 05:20 PM

In schools across America, young teens walk their halls with the heavy burden of perfection always upon them. Whoever instills this need for being flawless is often the one pushing young people. Their parents, their teachers, their family. However, at my school there is a new kind of pressure that is exceedingly different from the classic one: The pressure to fail.

Meeting the status quo. That's what it's all about. Don't do too well, don't stand out. Kids use the term “rebel” fairly often in my school. In dictionary terms, this means someone or a group of people who rise up against the government. In my school, it's someone who fails. Someone who steals. Someone who is not in a good place in their life. The Rebels are revered.

For the first time in my life I have felt pressure not to do well in school. I find myself making excuses for my A's like, “Oh, well I had to get an A, or I would fail that class.” I said this only once and regretted it soon after. It slipped out. I wanted acceptance, and in that moment it seemed that was how I was going to get it.

Because there were no grades in my previous school, many people think that it was easy. It wasn't at all. In fact, my school was academically competitive. But it was a quiet contest and a fun one. We didn't get letter grades, so we would all playfully pass judgment on each others work, in a constructive joking manner. Still, everyone wanted to have their work be top of the line, just because. Not for the sake of passing a class. But in my new school, there is an opposite way of thinking. Everyone is so afraid of failing, they have reversed the cycle and instead you are honored for failing.

The scary thing is, it doesn't stop there. Teachers, along with the kids, seem to think that if you are a good student than you are a geek, or you have no life except school. Once, a teacher gave me an incomplete, after seeing only half of a two-sided paper I had written. So I inquired about it and received full credit, but the teacher mocked me by calling me a "grade grabber." There is also something that a teacher of mine has called “The crap list,” which is just an imaginary list of names of my friends who are failing or forget homework. He says things like,"Oh, no homework? Well you just landed yourself on the crap list." He uses his made-up list casually and in a joking manner. However, I doubt that any of my peers actually think it is at all funny.

This is all saddening and scary to me. I want to look at it in retrospect. But here's the thing: I am torn, between wanting to do well academically and wanting to do well socially. It's hard being new, and I know so many people can relate to that. What we need to do here is clear: Reverse this vicious cycle. Make it so that it is "cool" to do well in school. We need friends. We need to get a good education and do well. They shouldn't cancel each other out. That is what I strive for.

Tags for this entry:
k-12 education, youth-adult relationships, grades, achievement, bullying, school culture, failure

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