Dialogue: We must stop straining failure through the PC filter

By SANDY BURGHAM

We all love the type of character that calls a spade a spade, people who don't beat around the bush but let you know exactly where you stand.

But, alas, the breed is becoming rarer and being replaced by folk who speak a carefully encrypted language, which demands that one decodes complicated terminology for something incredibly basic.

It's ironic, in the age where we need to save time, that we are being continually asked to read between the lines.

Let's take the straightforward concept of pass or fail - either you are good enough on this particular occasion or you're not. And if the latter, try harder next time. But somehow, as an overhang of early 1990s political correctness, the sentiment of such a concept, that we have lived with since time immemorial, is deemed no longer appropriate.

Now customer service experts are recommending our driving licence testers avoid the word "fail" and let the non-passers down gently.

Shouldn't it be critical that those who fail grasp the seriousness of not being deemed safe enough to be let loose on the road? They need to take total responsibility for their performance because that's what they have behind the wheel.

While we all have sympathy for the licence-testers who risk assault by failing people, tiptoeing around failure has no long-term benefit for those on the receiving end. At some stage, they will face failure again and simply need to learn to deal with it.

If you haven't won, you are the loser, not a loser. We wonder why we suddenly have a spate of people who are unable to cope with failure and take their anguish out on those they claim responsible.

Maybe it is a result of a new social custom in trying to ensure people don't take things personally. But how else can you take it when it is about performance. In an effort to let people down gently we may be letting substandard behaviour, and performance, become the social norm.

The sad thing about not being allowed to "fail" is that it makes victory not quite so sweet. Despite being a country which loves to win, we may be simply encouraging national mediocrity. Competition motivates, as does a healthy dose of realising your flaws.

There's an e-mail circulating at the moment which pokes fun at overt political correctness. For example, why say she is dumb when you can infer that she has simply taken a detour off the information superhighway? Why say he has a beer gut when you can describe it as a liquid grain storage facility? We may laugh at these examples but they are not too far from the truth when we look at how we pussyfoot around children.

My gorgeous nephew is a bit of a daydreamer. However, I almost mistook him for a Mozartesque boy-wonder when I read on his rather charming school report that he was prone to "mentally processing ideas." Children no longer struggle - they are "reluctant to learn" or "beginning to develop an ability to." Remember when school reports smacked of refreshing directness - "talks too much in class." Today this would be interpreted as a real plus - "extremely high-spirited and sociable."

Directness doesn't destroy lives, it builds character Sure, the counter argument is that we shouldn't judge children, that we should focus on positive encouragement. I guess the idea is that it helps them build a resilient self-esteem. But in accentuating the positive, we can't totally eliminate the negative. At some stage they will encounter situations where they have to play by someone else's rules and judgment - like in a vocational performance review when employers dig the dirt to deflate a pay claim.

It is called constructive criticism. It may suck, but that's life.

Employers notice that there is a generation coming through who find it difficult to accept criticism, and refuse to be judged by others. They assume that it is probably the fault of their assessor or immediate boss. Maybe sometimes it is. But attacking the boss is not going to get you the bucks.

So before you accuse the boss of being a balding male chauvinist pig, remember the PC filter. You might get further ahead by taking it on the chin and recognising him as someone who simply suffers from both follicle regression and swine empathy.