Causes of School Failure and How to Help Our Kids Overcome Them [Archives:2000/05/Culture]

Ahmad Modhesh Thabet
Mohammed Ali Othman School – Taiz
Failure of students in their schools is a major issue that concerns parents and educators on equal footing. The sad sentence “I flunked” has been spoken too many times; it has caused too many tears, and too much self-recrimination, too much resentment, too much surrender. Such evils usually affect both the failure student and his parents.
A school is the child’s first out-in-the-world testing ground. His success in school usually feeds his personality and failure can very well wither it. Therefore, it is extremely important for everybody to know the causes of failure so we can assist our children be away from.
What causes failure
1. The tension and fears: Almost all students have some tensions and fears when they know they are about to sit for examination or test. Some can overcome the nervousness and do their best. With many others, not only on tests and exams but also in daily classroom work. Failure causes failure. Some students, especially those with over sensitive feelings are so frightened at the thought of failure that they do not do their best and they come out far below their best.
2. Laziness and boredom: A few students fail because they do not try hard enough. Perhaps they are not encouraged by their parents or teachers to put forth their best efforts. They are bored with work that is too easy for them, or they give up before they start because they have a vague, uneasy feeling that the work is too hard.
3. Unsuccessful efforts: Some students fail to meet the requirements of their grades, although they may try very hard and may have the ability. These students may be handicapped by day to day study habits or they may never have been taught how to prepare for a test. Some students, although they are making an honest worthy effort, actually are unable to achieve a remarkable success because they were absent or not paying attention when an assignment was explained. They think they understand what has been assigned to them to do but they really do not understand.
4. Poor health and illness: Some students fail to do their required schoolwork because of poor health. Through frequent absence, they miss many explanations of new ideas and new processes. It is hard for them to keep up with healthy, vigorous students, because illness has lowered their vitality and their capabilities.
5. The parents may contribute directly to their child failure: Many parents are so busy with their own businesses, spending the major portion of their time out of their houses and usually come back home late. They usually leave their kids alone or with their housemaids or sometimes with their grandparents. Their children may waste their time watching TV programs for hours leaving their schoolwork aside. Some of these students especially the big ones may find it as a good time to phone each one of their friends talking about useless things. Moreover, some parents have no interest in their children’s school tasks. In this case a like disinterest is created in the part of the child. Such children find success very hard.
6. Teachers many contribute to the student’s failure too: Those teachers, who set impossible tasks for their students, those who show a lack of interest in helping a student when he is having a difficulty, or those who don’t encourage him when he is doing his best will increase the likelihood of work that is under par. Some teachers expect all children to measure up to the same standards, they assign to the less able student work that is too difficult for him and don’t give the brilliant student sufficient challenge. Under these circumstances, it is certain that some students will fail.
7. Paying no attention to the individual differences: A good many failures in school arise as a result of the individual differences – differences in capacity, in maturity, in temperament. Some students unquestionably do not have the mental ability to learn what other students do have. They will neither keep up nor catch up. Other students will fail because they are asked to learn something they are not yet mature enough to understand. Although any classroom contains a wide range of mental ability from the very dull to the very bright, almost all the Yemeni schools by tradition have a standard for each grade.
While many children meet such standards some will not and will have to repeat. In this case, especially for the young students, deciding “repeats” should be discussed by the teachers, principal and the parents together to figure out a suitable method to deal with that kid to get him not be shocked or frustrated by the news of repeating decision.
How to avoid this type of failure:
Competent teachers have to recognize that children are different and prepare to vary their teaching as best as they can according to the students individual rates of development. They also have to scale learning tasks of their students to somewhere near their abilities.
In first grade, for instance, the good teachers will encourage the bright children to being reading at once, let the average students proceed at an average rate, and reassure the slow that it is all right for them to wait a while.
If the parents have an interest in their child’s work, that will reinforce the child’s interest. Some parents never ask their child about anything related to their schoolwork so the child may become subject to failure repeatedly because they have no interest in learning. Then when they grow up they will be very likely to quit the school. Some parents do not keep in touch with the school so they have no awareness of poor work when it begins and it continues to be worse and worse. The result is that nothing is done before the situation gets out of hand. It will be very useful, if parents volunteer in schools. They can do wonderful things through helping the teachers in the classrooms and of it particularly with primary levels. Such positive activity is completely rare in Yemen. On the contrary, many parents volunteer in different school programs in the other countries especially America.
Giving a child good study conditions at home is very crucial because it helps learning. That requires providing the child with a desk of his own in some quite corner of the house, establishing rules about turning on the television and not engaging him in other activities before studying.
Psychologists in schools can play an important role. They collect the data about each student – physical and psychological. The information gained could be used usefully for helping the students by holding a conference, which the parent of the student, the teacher and the principal discuss what they can do for helping the students. Some students have a high level of intelligence but because they are emotionally disturbed, their performance gets worse and worse till they get somebody who listen, understand and give them the proper advice.
Failures due to lack of ability can not be eliminated, but the severity of its effects on children can be reduced. A sympathetic teacher and an understanding parent, working in harmony and with the child, can assist him in growing with some feeling of success. Let’s create and grow that sort of feeling – “success” – in our kids and the results will be fascinating.

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