Culture

Throughout my life, I've asked this question several times.

Let's look at some examples where we're basically saying "it's OK you failed, let's make it so that you don't have to learn from your failure":

Grade curves in school/college. Why do we offer curves for classes that you either pass or fail? If you did really bad on a test, you should get a really bad grade. Why should someone who got a 50% all of a sudden get a 65%, when they didn't know the material the first time around? Curves don't affect people who score consistently well anyway, so curves can just be considered a way to tell people it's OK to be mediocre. If I were to have things my way, anyone who gets below a 50% on a test immediately gets ...