Ren took her final exam for nursing school today. The instructors are grading the exams and phoning the students who failed by 8:00 p.m. tonight.

Rather, they're calling the students who "were less than sufficiently successful."

Coincidentally, I end up with this article from BBC News in my new feeds today. Here's a snippet:

Liz Beattie, a retired teacher, will call on the association's annual gathering in Buxton, Derbyshire, to "delete the word 'fail' from the educational vocabulary to be replaced with the concept of 'deferred success'".

The article is actually reporting that Education Secretary Ruth Kelly is dismissing this concept, pointing out that kids will face many successes and failures in life and that they need to be prepared for both.

Deferred success? Where was this when I was in school? You mean I could have just slacked all the time and succeeded later instead? What a deal!

I'm sorry, but how does that motivate kids to try harder? You're telling them, "don't worry if you don't succeed now; you can just succeed later instead." That's not even almost how the world works.

And as for this "less than sufficiently successful" crap, that's no better. I'd rather be told that I failed a test. That tells me that I performed poorly -- that the action I took wasn't good enough. Telling me that I was "less than sufficiently successful" is worse -- that tells me that I'm insufficient and unsuccessful.

See what I'm talking about? One defines my actions, and the other defines me. The irony here is that they're ending up with the opposite effect. In trying to protect the students' sense of self-worth, they've ended up labeling the student rather than the student's action.

Hey education system -- you failed.

Kudos to Secretary Kelly for seeing through this crap.