Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

Are You a Failure if You Do Your Best?

Parents wanted their children in my English classes at South Bend Central to receive an A or a B even though many were not capable of earning that. The parents judged an A or B as success and anything else as failure.

Keep in mind that most of us are about average, and C is an average grade. For parents to think their youngster, a child who might have only average ability in English, had failed with an average grade after performing to the best of his or her ability seemed unfair to me.

Apparently the grade of C was all right for their neighbor’s child but not for their own. It brought to mind Mr. Shidler’s assignment: what exactly is success (and failure)?