Most Children fail in school.
But there is a more important sense in which almost all children fail:
Except for a handful, who may or may not be good students, they fail to develop more than a tiny part of the enormous capacity for learning, understanding, and creating with which they were born and of which they made full use during the first two or three years of their lives.
Why do they fail?
They fail because they are afraid (A), bored (B) and confused (C).
They are afraid, above all else, of failing, of disappointing or displeasing the many anxious adults around them, whose limitless hopes and expectations for them hang over their heads like a cloud.
They are bored because the things they are given and told to do in school are so trivial, so dull,and make such limited and narrow demands on the wide spectrum of their intelligence, capabilities, and talents.
They are confused because most of the torrent of words that pours over them in school makes little or no sense.
It often flatly contradicts other things they have been told, and hardly ever has
any relation to what they really know - to the rough model of reality that they carry around in their minds.
How does this mass failure take place? What really goes on in the classrooms? What are these children who fail doing ?What goes on in their heads? Why don’t they make use of more of their capacity?
You can explore answers to some of these questions in a book titled How Children Fail by John Holt
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