ABSTRACT

Imagine a student coming home with a school report which says that they got five ‘A’s (top mark) and one ‘F’ (failure). How do you think the parents of this student will react? We can envisage three reactions1:

1 A first set of parents take the report and immediately focus on the one failure. They berate the student for a lack of application to work and point out the opportunities provided for the student. The student is blamed for a poor performance in this one subject, and the success of the five ‘A’s is missed, passed over and forgotten in the light of this failure.