Why Do Children Fail There Exams

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1 WHY ARE OUR CHILDREN FAILING IN SCHOOL? By Robert Gordon MS and Myrna Gordon MA Are you bothered by the many students you see who lack motivation and don’t seem to want to learn? Are you concerned about the large percentage of our children who are not learning in school? Statistics show that one third of the students who enter high school will drop out before graduation and many students with high school diplomas are barely able to read or write. The vast majority of students leaving our education system do not have the skills to earn a living in our increasingly technological society and international marketplace. What are we doing wrong? How are we failing our children? Could we not be looking in the right places to correct this problem? Research shows that what is needed is not more money spent on education but an understanding of why children are turning off to learning and failing in school. We don’t need more text books but rather a different perspective with a new approach. We have been trying to teach with out looking at the missing dimension, the psychological reasons why children turn off to learning. Bruno Bettleheim, world renowned child psychologist in On Learning to Read, pleads with us to look at the “valid” psychological reasons why students fail. He says, “Although there has been great concern about children’s inability to read (learn) and how to overcome it, by and large there has been little sympathy for the valid psychological reasons why a child may passively resist or actively refuse to become literate, despite the obvious advantages that literacy offers.” He adds that “the missing component in educating the whole child is our lack of understanding why he doesn’t want to learn.” This different approach to solving the underachiever’s problem was discussed in Cognitive Behavioral Psychology for Schools by Alexander and Hare. They said that “To

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