In my experience one of the biggest problems in education is that it is virtually impossible for students to flunk
Students know this and therefore some students don't even feel the need to try
They know that they will pass whether they work or not, so why should they work?
Even worse, teachers are held responsible for students' grades, so teachers will very often give students grades higher than students' achievements mandate. This act of falsification is even more demoralizing for students
But should one teacher start grading students appropriately then this teacher will be accused of being very incompetent (after all, students of other teachers only have the best grades, sadly they are no more knowledgeable than students of the teacher who gives appropriately bad grades). Such an honest teacher will then face the wrath of both students (surprised that they someone demands work from them) and parents (who expect good grades) and other teachers and the headmaster (because failing a student is a big problem for the school) as well as the school counselor (who will often pity the students and accuse the teacher).
The end result is that, especially in some schools like the school in question, students always get best grades even though they know nothing ;/
But I've already been told I was wrong. I was told (oversimplifying arguments I do not fully understand):
- Indeed, teachers and not students should be held responsible for students' poor performance since almost always teachers and not students are at fault
- If students seem to have a cynical mindset (trying to get good grades without work) then this is a result of teachers either failing to present knowledge in an interesting way or failing to instill a correct value system in students
- As a corollary students should never be punished in any way whatsoever, in particular they should never fail a year; teachers however, whose students get bad grades should be fired
- Lots of pathologies in education stem from its violent nature. Students are brought to school by violence and therefore they are victims. So they mustn't be victimized further
I am a bit perplexed to be honest. This is very contrary to my intuition and to my personal experience, yet I suspect this may be a common mindset among school counselors
Finally, depression, suicide, self-harm. Problem is that I think that many students are very cynical here. Whenever all else fails and it seems that they may fail after all they just go to the school counselor crying about their depression and that they are going to harm themselves or commit suicide. Ta-da, problem solved, the counselor makes certain such a student will get a good grade. Not failing such students instills an abysmally bad, incredible cynical attitude in them. To be clear: I do not say that this particular student was that cynical; I don't know; however, I think it is possible