> passing students who don’t deserve to pass At one time, students were routinely "held back" if they didn't understand something well enough to pass. That ga

> passing students who don’t deserve to pass At one time, students were routinely "held back" if they didn't understand something well enough to pass. That gave them a chance to catch up, so that when they got back into the class, they would be more likely to succeed. It always seemed to me that this was an act of kindness, for the alternative is for them to sit in classes of more and more demanding material, feeling less and less adequate. Back in those days, it was not really considered a terrible thing to spend some extra time catching up. Folks would ask me around report time whether I had passed my exams. It was not meant as an insult, and was not taken to be one, either. I see postsecondary students all the time who clearly have missed some steps at around grade 9 or so. Being smart and ambitious, these students would definitely have caught on, if someone had assessed them honestly. Instead, they live in an imposter-syndrome world, always waiting to be "found out". Folded in with the false kindness of passing everyone is, as others have pointed out, the deeply corrosive influence of measuring teaching performance by passing rates. It doesn't really take a lot more than honesty and sometimes a helping hand, to let students realize their potential, whatever it might be.