More often than the public likes to believe, “social promotion” has become a fairly large part of education, specifically early and high school education. Every year, many children throughout the nation are being moved on to the next grade level without passing the previous education level. Over all, “social promotion” is doing more harm than good for various reasons. One of the main arguments of “social promotion” is pride against ability. A large group of people believe that retention hurts children’s self-esteem and makes them more likely to drop out of high school. While this may be true, sending children forward in their education without being properly prepared for the next grade level also hurts their self-esteem and makes them more likely to drop out. Moving a child on to the next grade level while the child is unprepared to handle the new requirements and higher work expectations is completely unfair to the student. Unprepared children are …show more content…
If a student were to fail a course or grade level, said student should be made to retake the course or grade level with extra help and guidance. If a student is thought to be at risk for low self-esteem caused by retention, they should be given the option of academic or social counseling. Pushing a child forward when they’re unprepared is unacceptable. Social promotion is causing a bigger issue than retention. In conclusion, social promotion ultimately hurts students far more than it helps. Social promotion creates perpetual cycles of unpreparedness for students as they continue to fall behind in classes. The better solution for struggling students is extra help and counseling. If a student struggles in a particular subject to the point of failure, they should be given extra help and more broken down explanations of the concepts. Students should not be passed into harder classes when they couldn’t manage the previous