My "messed up" teaching philosophy (off topic)

Okay, so this is an off topic post. I know that my views on education are a lot different than most in our class so I thought I would just spell out what my philosophy is and if anyone wanted to talk about it with me I think it would be great. Because, any oppurtunity to see someone elses perspective is an oppurtunity to grow in my opinion.

My overall philosophy is that students need to fail. They need to be consistently taken to the point of failure and they need to know that life goes on and failure is inneveitable if you are pushing yourself as hard as you should. This is in stark contrast to the mentalitly of most American teachers that I have come across. The idea of students making 90's or above in all of their subjects consistently is just a sad sign that they are not being pushed hard enough and they are capable of so much more.

It is my opinion that everyone is unique and special in their own way and these differences should be encouraged. Children are capable of so much more than we are currently giving them credit for. They are capable of failing and picking themselves up and being better for it, it is my experience that the parents are the ones that have the hardest time with this concept.

I know that to many it may come off as cruel to fail everyone in the class if they are not trying hard enough but to me it seems quite cruel not to. We are in a safe learning environment when we are inside of the classroom. And students need to learn what they are capable of within this environment instead of setting them up for failure once they have entered "the real world".

In many ways this is quite a hard way to teach. You have to take each student as an individual and push them to their own individual limits. no student should have to stay behind and wait for the rest of the class to catch up to where they are at, and no student should ever be expected to accept mediocraty. There are close to 6.6 billion people in this world, and each one has a unique nature about themselves, when a student is within my classroom I would like for them to learn how to seperate themselves from the masses.

The common criticism I have gotten when expressing this mindset is that I am not teaching the students to become apathetic and caring. However, it is my opinion that quite the oppposite is true. When pushing a student to become the very best that they are capable of they often find failure and shortcommings within themselves which makes them more understanding of those around them who are struggling. It is also promoting a global environment in which people the professionals are more capable and the people who shouldn't be doctors or lawyers because their strengths lie in other fields are not in positions of power just because their parents had the money to send them to nice universities.

Yes, some students are left behind. In the classroom I am in now there is a student which is holding the entire class back because of how slow he is. This frustrates me to know end, why should the one affect the many? If I was the teacher I would simply move the class on as they are ready to progress with or without him, and I know this seems heartless but it is the job of him and his parents to get him back the the level he needs to be at. I would have an easier time explaining this to one set of parents than explaining to 30 sets of parents why I did not get their children to the level they need to be at. If there was a way to provide seperate instruction for this student outside, I would gladly offer it but bar that I don't feel that it is fair that this child is getting 90's on tests because they are making the levels of tests low enough for him to do so.