Unsound Advice

When I see or hear people dishing out THE advice, "Let him/her fail to teach her a lesson." the first thing that comes to my mind is: let yours fail first.

Most of these people are singles, of course.

They tell you how they will surely allow their daughter or son fail their exam to 'wake them up from their idea'.

And those who are parents themselves,  surprisingly, give such advice. And surprise surprise, they never allow their own children to fail any exam, primarily because their daughter or son never exasperates them to that extent. But yours does. It reflects bad parenting. Drastic times call for drastic measures, and what else can be more drastic than getting your child to fail?

They don't stop to think about the consequences of failing an exam for a child.

At best, failing an exam could, might really wake the child up, and perhaps the child would shine academically for ever and ever.

But how many times does that happen?

There are more failure stories about children failing exams. For one success story, I have twenty failure stories to counter the effectiveness of such a tactic. As it is, I haven't heard of a success story from failing an exam, but I have seen many failure stories and broken dreams from doing badly in exams.

At worst, these children don't get up from then on. The belief that they are stupid and doomed to failure is affirmed through the failed exam.

By now it should be clear as day that I am against 'let him/her fail the exam' advice.

It is a lousy advice. Period.

So stop asking people to let their children fail an exam. The advisor himself or herself reflects the very essence of bad parenting.