There are several reasons why students are approved in without deserving. The first and most obvious reason is financial. Language courses need the money students pay to study there. I believe that, although, most of Language courses are ruled by ex-teachers whom usually feel so frustrated with teaching (because it does not guarantee a successful financial life) that they forget about teaching principles and start thinking only as an entrepreneur. Coordinators sometimes force, slightly, teachers to approve some students who do not deserve be approved because they fear the students transfer to other language course. It happens, and it is quite often specially in Manaus, a place where every corner there is an English course.
A possible reason besides money is still related to numbers. The average of approval in language courses might increase or decrease the image of the institution. At "Projeto DLLE/DRH", for instance, there is an image of never reproving a student, everybody is always approved. When I first saw the results of the tests from my students in DRH, I really understood why some teachers approve many students without deserving. I faced a situation never experienced before. I had under my responsibility a group of students that apparently fit level 5, but effectively belong to level 3 most of them. Why did it happen? It is a special case in which not all the levels of study are offered, they HAVE to be pass because there is no level 5 again next semester. It is very uncomfortable to listen to your students saying, "Teacher, I HAVE to pass because if I don't I will wait until the class level 3 get in level 5, I will lose two years of study." My students of level 5 suffered a great impact when I got in the classroom speaking in English, asking them to write at least fifteen lines in their writings and not allowing them to use the dictionaries in their tests. It was a completely different and hard situation to them. I had three students that gave up after the first test.
I decided to keep on doing all these things, I do believe in education and especially in approving/reproving system. As I said before, their grades were a completely disaster, also, I found out that the texts they were writing to me as a homework (which I rewarded them with 0.1 point in the test) were made using the Babel Fish Translator. I realized I was facing a giant pedagogical trouble. After the first test, some students gave up and I noticed it was not bad, because the ones who persisted got better grades in the second test.
Then I collected all the bizarre mistakes they made in their writings and prepared a power point presentation to show them what was wrong in the texts. It was a success, they loved, really. I thought they were going to get upset but when the presentation ended up they said "thank you" because I worried about them and nobody never did that so. I do expect them to get over the bad grades they had in the beginning because they are nice people. But I already warned them not to expect be approved if they don't get the average grade, which is 6.0.
What I wanted to show is that it is possible to have a group of students that are on the verge of flunking transformed into a group of hard students. This way, we avoid the dilemma of approving or not approving the student that does not deserve be approved. The main problem is that the teacher has to work in double and most of us do not want our students to really learn. If I looked only to the income I get from DLLE/DRH, I would NEVER worry about my students learning! The problem is that it is more comfortable to the teacher to approve everyone than to make graphics of grades and establish a goal of success to the class.
It is important to remember that, in DLLE/DRH case the students do not pay to study there. It influences a lot in the way the teacher will deal with her students. At Projeto CEL, another example that I take from my own experience, I do not remember exactly how many students I have flunked but I keep an average of eight or ten students approved per class. Considering that a class has about twenty students, one might think that I am such a perverse teacher. Well, I am a teacher, who does not approve students that do not deserve, but the ones who are approved have the highest grades in the next level. What happens in CEL is completely different of what happens in DLLE/DRH because of the level that are provided by the institution every semester, so, I do not have to worry so much in making them reach a good level of knowledge. I simply flunk them.
Another good reason for me to believe that teachers approve students without deserving is pure compassion. I saw, with these ethical eyes, a student of mine crying after the class, because she got 3.4 in a test and told her "you must study hard". It is simple, teachers are not machines, I know, but we have to understand that if a student did not study hard this semester, the he will not study more next semester.
These are only examples of language courses, there is also the case of public institutions in which students are approved in mass in order to increase government number of educated people. This case is very special. First because it has no solution, and second because it comes along Brazilian history for a long time. This is due to a policy of covering the truth. If people, the mass, do not know the truth nor the way to find it, then, a person or a group of persons that have the truth can overpower the mass. Knowledge is a dangerous power that some governments, mainly undeveloped countries' governments, use to control its people. In our case, it is clear that many governments we elected were not preoccupied with education at all. It is like a snowball. Once it rolls, it keeps growing more and more. Teachers who try to go against this policy face big troubles with not only the authorities, but also the students, who are used with this process of 'foolishment'. They are not able to see the truth because, in fact, they were never taught to see through the government booklets. Unfortunately, there is nothing a teacher can do in public schools to overcome the current situation. When the subject is teaching to high school, we face another problem. The continuous entrance exam to Universities, students have a continuous evaluation in the end of each year. If a student flunks in the middle of the process, he cannot recover the previous result. Some schools have interest in have their students approved in 'Vestibular' or 'PSC' because it promotes the image of the schools. It is a matter of Marketing. Besides, English is a very important subject to appear in the schedule but not so important to flunk students in the school. When they are not approved in Mathematics, Portuguese or Chemistry, then the student deserved to repeat the whole year of study, but when he flunks in English, it simply is discarded and the student goes to the next year as nothing had happened.
