Why do teachers give retarded and lazy students the lowest passing score when they technically failed?

[Gourmet Race]

Back when I was a high school student, there were students who didn't do anything, failed at every quiz and exam, but they still somehow managed to pass, albeit their score was the lowest but they still passed when they should've failed, and I don't understand how that's possible. Was it because of pity? Did they just despise these students and wanted them gone so they didn't have to deal with them? I'm not even mad that they're able to pass with little to no effort, and there's no point of worrying because they're already adults, I'm just confused. It'd be one thing if they were lazy but smart or industrious but stupid, but they don't have either positive traits. It's just ridiculous how teachers didn't care about their future when they were their students.

 

[RollerGator]

So they don't have to deal with the same dumbass next year.

 

[Mariposa Electrique]

I'm sure this is a thing in developing nations but grants are allocated based on on how many students pass to the next grade. Also, teachers secretly hate students and don't want them again.

 

[Soycast Guy]

Teachers are scored based on how many students pass and how well students score, so they pass even the lazy students with low scores so the blame won’t be put on them.

 

[Moths]

If a student doesnt pass its usually a big thing of having to justify it to the department head, the principal, the parents, probably some other government official, tonnes of paperwork and it doesnt look good on school statistics

So fuck it let the little bastard skate by

 

[DumbDude42]

schools get money based on graduation rates. the more students graduate, the more money the school gets.
the school administrators then pass this incentive on to teachers: the more students fail a class, the worse that teachers evaluation is going to be, which will negatively affect his career. the teachers know this, so their goal is to pass as many students as possible.

there are different theoretical fixes for this situation, like making the decision to pass or fail a student dependent on objective and standardized tests designed by people outside the school system, but that comes with a whole lot of other problems of its own.

 

[Table Country]

Could you imagine the lawsuit?

 

[Apochrypha]

The schools I went to never did this. But I suppose some do it because it's easier to lie to a kid then tell them they suck shit. Something something, gen-z be weak, something something.

 

[Doji]

They know there's no hope for them.

 

[Meat Target]

Is "No Child Left Behind" still a thing?

 

[Pony! Hugger of People]

Those are exactly the type of people that the government, the media, and anyone in any position of power want.

The average high schooler is thicker than pig shit and that means they'll blindly and unthinkingly consume whatever they're fed and repeat it, and if you as a teacher attempt to help elevate a struggling student you're shamed by your peers and seniors for wasting your time and resources.

If you do fail a student then you have the parent, principal, superintendent and a litany of other flying monkeys harassing you about how that will reflect you and the school.

Culture is also hugely important. While an American mom will come in and complain that her precious baby is failing and blame the teacher, foreign parents are much more likely to come in and actually work out a plan to help their child improve.

Most homework I've seen from Canadian and American students is years behind what would be taught in the UK or even the Balkans, but you can't acknowledge or have a constructive conversation about that because trying to talk to a North American about their culture is like trying to talk to Ralph about responsibility, they're just going to holler about how great they are and make a fool of themselves

 

[Johnny Salami]

I was a math instructor some time back and the dean would often get on our asses for the failure rate in our required classes. It got so bad the part time instructors had no say in the grading curve and I was told to give a student a passing grade (C-). Education would improve if retards were told they were retarded

 

[PipTheAlchemist]

Most homework I've seen from Canadian and American students is years behind what would be taught in the UK

Implying the education systems in the UK and other European countries aren't equally as horseshit as the schools in North America

 

[Sparkletor 2.0]

It's a multitude of things. The "every kid has a different learning style" shit is the worst.

Kid is failing? Must be the teacher's fault for not adapting to the student's individual learning style. Better pass the kid to even it out.

 

[Garnet123]

If the kids fail, even if they deserve to and their poor grades are entirely their own fault, the parents will likely run to the head and make a fuss. Blame the teacher, claim bad teaching, unfair grading, sue the school or threaten to, run to the newspapers or social media. Try to force better grades. So, in many schools, the head expects the teachers to just let them barely pass to avoid the trouble and negative attention. If the teachers resist, they can expect that the school won't have their back and will side with the parents. Many teachers come to the point where they feel it's not worth the fight or the trouble, just let it go and let the student pass and go on to be someone else's problem. (Source: Teacher friends and relatives).

 

[Cyberpunk Panatela]

Depends on the country. I'll give my home country as an example, because the government really shat up schooling.

Spoiler: Long: How to fuck up the school system

When I attended school it used to work like this:

Any person with an average mark of below 50% across all subjects failed the year.

If you failed more than three years in either primary or high school, or if you reached the age of 21 while still in school and not in your final year, your state-sponsored schooling was over.

After failing twice the kid usually got some psychometric tests to determine if he was retarded or not and, if so, was placed into either a class for "slow learners" or a school for such.

Testing and other evaluation was done by the school, with a government exam at the end of the final year of high school (similar to the UK's A-levels, don't know if the USA has something like this).

In short, if a kid failed, it was on him - he was considered either lazy or stupid. If said kid averaged 10% in a subject, that was the mark on his report.

In 1995 the then Minister of Education decided that the school system was "outdated" and would be changed to become more like the "immensely successful" US system "which gave the world the motor car and the space programme".

I'm not sure how closely these changes resemble the actual US system, but this is what we got:

The changes that were made were:

You now passed at 40%, at one stage it was even 35%.

The number of compulsory subjects increased while the number of possible subjects that could be taken was cut to about 10% of what was available previously.

No penalty for failing for scholars. You could technically stay in school until age 30, if you wanted to.

Most of the retards were put into normal schools. This was called "mainstreaming" and would be very beneficial to said retards, because they would have positive social interaction and the normal kids would learn some empathy (I'm fucking serious).

A lot more "standardisation" tests by the provincial education departments "to ensure that all schools are teaching at the same level".

It was made extremely difficult to expel kids. Criminal activity would still lead to continued "education" in a reformatory.

Because teaching was now "child-centred" and "outcome-based", if a child fails something, the teacher or the school were assumed to have done something wrong (what was called "failure to educate"). The child was never at fault.

This led to the exact phenomenon described in the OP. A teacher could only fail so many scholars before drawing his superiors' attention, so only the worst of the worst got failed. The "just scraped through" 41% mark is really shorthand to the person lucky enough to educate that young lad the following year that he's a hopeless case.

Teaching became more oriented towards the standardised testing and less towards actual knowledge of the subject - "write this when they ask that" crap. Obviously this didn't help improve the situation

Too many children failing these tests would decrease a school's funding and draw scrutiny from worthless Education Department drones, while a school-leaver not being able to count to ten and having a vocabulary of under 300 words in his home language had no consequences.

A lot of this bullshit is in the process of being abolished and changed back (for example the "standardized tests" have been trashed).

The main reason for the about-face is that the local universities got sick and tired of wasting their time on students who didn't even know basic high school shit, and basically threatened the government that if things didn't change dramatically they would reintroduce matriculation examinations (entrance exam) for all prospective students and no longer exempt people who had passed the government final examination from taking these.

They also started screening students for more difficult degree programs, especially engineering and law, with aptitude tests to keep morons out.

All of a sudden the government got very interested in getting rid of the bullshit and "Rethinking Education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution" (4th industrial revolution" is a retarded buzzword, means 'computer age')

The fat faggot who introduced this "child-centred" crap also died and his dickriders have moved on, so there's no nobody who's really interested in defending it.

TL, DR: Teachers may have to pass the little shits because doing otherwise would reflect badly on their "teaching ability". There is, however, no reason to give the little jerks outstanding grades for their wasted year.

 

[AmberBaker]

I also faced such situations a few times. Even now, in my uni group, a few students do almost nothing and have bad academic results but still pass all the exams. To be honest, in the beginning, I was pretty mad because why do those, who study hard, and those who do nothing, as a result, pass the same exams? And for some time, it was very hard to motivate me to do something because of such things. I've always had math problems, and it's always hard to do some tasks. But I've never thought about becoming one of such students, and when I have troubles, I do my best to solve them, using the help of https://edubirdie.com/do-my-math-homework when there is a need, and so on. Yes, I use some help, but I also work on improving my skills; I even had lessons with a tutor a few times. I don't want to give up and hope that professors will still give me minimum points to pass the semester. So now I don't pay attention to anyone who does this and just minds my own business.