Am I being unreasonable to be angry with my son’s uni tutors?

[Ladymacbethshandwash]

My 18 year old son is coming to the end of his first year of a performing arts degree. Since he was a little boy he wanted to become an actor so this was the natural route for him to take.

He has struggled with certain aspects of the course, namely the movement side as he is 6 foot 3 and as graceful as bambi on ice. He has failed his two movement assessments and passed his acting assessments. Today at his end of year tutorial his tutors told him he will never make it as an actor. They bluntly destroyed his dreams and sent him on his way. My 18 year old son is away from home, distraught because in his opinion his dream is over, his life is finished. He won’t come home and he doesn’t want to speak to me. Why oh why could they have not been a little more careful about the language they used? I know I’m his Mum, so I am obviously biased but he does have something, he’s funny, confident, handsome and he does have acting ability. Unfortunately he doesn’t believe this now, he’s so low I don’t know what to do.

No he didn't get given one because his thoughts on the course would have impacted on their rating

Absolutely dreadful behaviour on the part of the university

I hope he gets his appeal

Generally, you can't appeal a mark on the grounds of academic judgement, only proper process, or claim mitigation. It may be possible for your DS to be tested for dyspraxia, and have an agreed set of "reasonable adjustments" for his assessments.

But he can't just ignore movement altogether. I work in an allied field, and what you describe as the material he's failed is pretty fundamental.

It doesn't mean he doesn't have talent; it doesn't mean he won't "make it" as an actor, but it does mean he's not been successful in this area of basic training. He needs to think about that, rather than do the "X Factor" style "I believe in myself" stuff.

He needs a little more humility & self-knowledge, frankly - tough for an 18 year old boy. I wonder if he's been a big fish in a small pond. His behaviour sounds like it. I see this all the time, and it's a tough steep learning curve.

YABU to be angry with his tutors. They're doing their job, and it's not a ball of laughs to have to tell a student their work isn't good enough. We don't enjoy it.

Or maybe they forgot as they were dealing with his upset? Did he go back and ask for one? Maybe he should and have his voice heard?

In fact the idea of guaranteed passes etc is a filtering upwards from a GCSE culture of endless crib sheets and redrafts of coursework/controlled assessment, hand holding through a level with intervention (increasingly) and it's starting to hit university as some think they are paying 'for a degree' vs 'the opportunity to study for a degree'

This.

At what point do you think young people should be asked to do some tough self-reflection? We try to introduce them gently but firmly to the requirements of professional responsibility and self-assessment and self-knowledge. Most of my students are talented, hard-working, and very uncertain & modest about themselves. They want to do well, and they've been pushed a lot, without being given the requisite tools of resilience because they've not been given opportunities to improve safely. They see any "low" mark as "failure" rather than a chance to improve.

Employers now blame us in the universities for some young graduates being unprepared for the rough & tumble of working life. Ideally, working life shouldn't be rough & tumble, but we're not responsible for that in the universities ...

This is a terrible story, I’m so sorry for you and your son OP. I’m sad but not surprised to hear that drama schools are still behaving in this way with such little regard for the damage they could do to a student’s mental health.
I too did my BA in Acting at a Conservatoire that was hard to get into. I have dyscaulcuila which means I cannot remember dance steps, so when I began I was self conscious and awkward, just waiting to get every movement class wrong. No matter how good my performance was with text, it was my movement that was harshly criticised which only made it harder to do with confidence. Every year they threatened to kick me out, I sat at a table with a panel deciding my fate, crying and begging them to let me stay. Each year they did, but they did great damage to my confidence which impacted hugely on my performances. Eventually I graduated with a 2:1. I was one of the first of my classmates to sign with an agent from the showcase, and then I went immediately into the West End. I worked at The Globe, did TV, film and was employed for my dexterity with text and comic timing. I have been on stage with Diana Rigg, Mark Rylance and Prunella Scales. And never once has anyone ever required any sort of ‘movement’ that I couldn’t do (naturally I don’t apply for musical theatre as that’s not where my strengths lie). Do not let your son give up his place without a fight. Get him to tell them he’ll work on his movement and he’ll prove it to them that he’s worthy of his place. Then go away and get him some CBT therapy that teaches him to have confidence in his actual abilities and to throw himself with full confidence into any of those bullshit movement classes (they’re a very ‘first year’ type of class anyway). Don’t underestimate his mental state, especially since he’s an actor and could be even more affected by his own emotions than others, go and see him, look after him, build his confidence (perhaps he could get some new inspiration on his talent from an old teacher or tutor from his teens who believed in him) help him fight for his place there. He’s only 18. If he fights for his dreams and wins, he’ll be unstoppable!

Pearl, thank you for this. At the moment he feels there’s no point fighting because they just want him off the course. I’ve spoken to his old drama teacher and she is mortified, she said he does have talent and their is something special about him. She’s an ex actress, now a senior lecturer, but he’s not having it. ‘Of course she’s going to say that Mum’. He sent off some information to agents last week including a self tape and he’s already been asked to attend a meeting, but even this is not enough to make him thing you know what maybe they are wrong. I just have to hope he picks up in the next few days .

So he won a place against great odds and now, a year after their tutoring they are writing him off? That is clearly not right. But the main problem seems to me, how do you support your son and get him over what must a devastating disappointment? To all those saying he's 18 and should cope alone I guess your children are still young/haven't had to face someone trampling on their dreams. Get close to your son, bring him home and start helping him to rebel against the negative remarks and look for another, better, course. Good luck and keep calm.

OP i can empathised with your dilemma ...i faced the same situation with my son too ...he was reading Civil engineering and found it a struggle in his first year ...his tutor instead of being sympathetic...told him that at the end of the day, it was only a piece of
Paper...if he was struggling to leave ....

My son stayed on to prove the tutor wrong and has since graduted with a Phd ....

I have no idea how it works with PA degrees but on standard academic degrees he should be able to transfer these credits to another course under CAT scheme
It should be the same. As long as the modules overlap with the content of a new course then he should be able to transfer to 2nd year.
One option might be looking at a joint honours course with drama as one of the 2 subjects.

I know people who've credit transferred and it was possible when people shifted universities to similar courses but not if they were wanting to do something totally different.

Not doing well in the first year of this course doesn't mean the OP would have to write off anything in performing arts, just that he perhaps needs to manage his expectations as he has been terribly naive and misguided with the continual belief that 'I am great and I will make it'

I have dyscaulcuila which means I cannot remember dance steps

Ooh, never knew there was a name for it. I had to leave a dance class at age 6 :( My latest experience was this January, when I signed up for a Tai Chi class. Left after the third class, completely humiliated :(

In a being positive manner my friends dad taught Heath Ledger at school and told him je would never amount to anything.....

I suppose a lot of us like the idea of knowing a 'star' or a 'future star/star in the making.'

As I actually do know one, I actually feel quite ambivalent about what goes with being an extremely successful actor.

Certainly this person is never going to have to worry about paying the gas bill. He has a comfortable lifestyle - nice clothes, a couple of houses. Even if his career plummets he'll have enough to live on thanks to shrewd financial advice.

But there are downsides. His career has partly depended on boyish good looks so if his appearance changes, he may be less employable. And I think being so recognisable means he has no privacy. Everybody wants selfies. He can't go shopping without being in the Daily Mail.

He does love acting but the high-playing film roles and/or projects that get financial backing tend to mean getting typecast - so he gets to do relatively little of the work that might be especially interesting.

All the publicity stuff is actually very boring and involves having to be nice and bland - and if you do express an opinion that's remotely controversial, that means getting loads of bad press.

So I'm honestly not sure it's the sort of future I'd want for my child - fortunately my daughter is not that way inclined.

You need to check the institution's 'Rules of Assessment'. Being kicked of a course is not the whim of an individual tutor it is more usually due to performance.
Your son should have access to the rules of assessment, probably a link on the student website. It is a public document (within the institution) and details the process of success or failure for the courses within the institution.
In many institutions you would need to fail more than 50% of the course to not progress to Year 2. If you pass a more than 50% of the course you may be offered a (retake) to achieve a pass on those failed units to achieve the 120 credits required for each stage of a degree course. If you fail the referral you would then have failed.
In many institutions the first year achievement does not contribute to the final grade as institutions are aware that some students take time to find their feet. In some institutions it is possible to graduation with 300 credits/units/points, meaning you can even drop a couple of modules. Each year of a degree is made up of 120 credits, whith each module worth an identified number of credits/units/points to the year total.
You son should ask the course leader to explain how, under the rules of assessment, he is unable to continue on the course.
If they can't he should take this to the Student Union and ask them to take it up with the course tutors, school or faculty.

I think that advice about first year fails etc needs to be in relation to the specific institution. And it's quite significant o know whether the course that the OP's DS is doing is a standard university Drama/Theatre degree, or a BA in Acting or Performance or the like at a conservatoire (part of the CDET scheme).

Some universities cynically in y view purport to offer conservatoire-style actor training, but they don't really. They can't offer the contact hours or the connections.

If the OP's DS is in a normal University Drama degree then a lot of the advice on this thread is good. If he's at a conservatoire (RADA, LAMDA, Guildhall, CSSD, LIPA, RSC, RWM&D) then there will be rather different practices around progression - it's not as tough as dance degrees as places like Rambert or Central, where students are definitely "assessed out" but the practices can be different.

And that is fine - they're specialist training institutions. They actually do know what they're doing, IME (I've been External Examiner at conservatoires).

When he did his assessment at his tutorials afterwards he was never given written feedback to work on only verbal. Is that usual, I thought he would have got some sort of sheet with a breakdown of the marking criteria and a score and comments for each aspect.

TheRagingGirl I think we're talking a PA degree at a university. The OP has not said, but 700 applicants for 30 places is not RADA, LAMDA, GSA, LIPA etc - more like 3000 applicants for those places.

Aw OP I feel for you and your son.

Bachelors in Music performance here.

Has he tried looking at a different course? Different university perhaps? One with less emphasis on movement?

The thing is, the tutors wouldn't have said that if they didn't think they needed to say it. The fact is you need to be harsh in that situation. Though that doesn't make it any easier to deal with.

In my degree, you had to pass the first year modules. They were the basics in every other module for the following years. And if you couldn't get the basics, you certainly couldn't grasp the remainder of the degree. I had to do retakes (I got depression which seriously affected my motivation). But I got there and I understood that these were REQUIRED modules that I had to pass!

He should be at least allowed a retake. People are right though, the industry is full of rejection and people who think you can't do it. He MUST prove them wrong. He has to prove he has the mettle to continue on with his. Easier said than done I know... us performance types are easily knocked.

On another note, I think there is more to this than he's telling you. They can't recommend he leaves based on just 2 modules of movement? There must be more? I think the requirement for my uni was passing all the requisite modules, not so much emphasis on the few you chose in the 1st year. Doesn't make sense to me...

Yes, that's true EvilTwins - I'd not noticed that. Thing is, those sorts of courses are OK but if your aim be a workingactor and nothing else it's worth taking your time, working, getting gofer-style experience doing anything and everything in the theatre, and applying for the RADA -level conservatoires when you're a bit older.

IME, I've seen a very few floppy-haired posh boys sometimes get straight in to RADA et al. straight from school, but most people are a bit older & more experienced & mature getting into actual drama school (as opposed to a drama degree).

TheRagingGirl My son is a wire haired northerner so I don’t think RADA would look at him yet lol!

Lots of people who go on to be successful in different spheres are discouraged/ disparaged by their teachers or suffer some type of failure in their early career (JK Rowling.... Branson et al).
Acting requires a massive range of people/ personalities/ types and your DC is obviously talented to get as far as he has. There is a place for him in the profession.
He needs to frame this teacher's words as an example of the brutality of rejection within the profession. It won't be the last time he faces it. But he has to learn resilience and develop that blind self- confidence ( almost arrogance) which is necessary to pick himself up and move on.
Buoy him up. Tell him the teacher sounds like a knobhead.

'My Mum says you're a knobhead' sounds like a bit of feedback that will reallly help the OP's son to move on with his studies. (After all what's the point of signing up for a degree and actually attempting to learn from your teachers?)

More seriously I think if there was only limited communication from a young person in such circumstances, I might attempt a visit to get a fuller picture of what was going on.

A friend's daughter announced that she was being chucked off her degree course - and this was a bolt from the blue to her parents. But when they started to probe a bit more deeply it emerged that the problems had been going on for a while, and the girl had failed to respond to all manner of earlier indications from her tutors that things needed to change...

To me, it sounds like what he needs to learn is a combination of the kind of arrogance that says "ok, I know this is your opinion, but I'm going to go for it anyway" and the kind of humility that says "all right, this may seem a bit silly to me, but as long as there is a chance I could learn from it, I'm going to do my damnedest to work at it anyway".

I don't think "teacher is a knobhead" really gets you very far along that path. It's what my dad said to me after I had failed an English lit module. It didn't make me try harder, it didn't make me learn more, it just encouraged me to feel sorry for myself. What he should have said was "ok, so where do you go from here?"

In my case, the problem was pretty obvious: I was by far the best student on my course so I hadn't worked hard enough, I didn't think there was anything these people could teach me.

Of course there is no knowing what your ds needs, but there is unlikely to be any problem where sitting down and thinking about how he can improve isn't going to be a solution.

And I am speaking as the parent of the girl who got rejected at the audition of a major drama school for "not having enough movement in the lower part of her body" after she had explained that she had a badly sprained ankle and couldn't put weight on it.

Other health-related problems mean that I am having very similar conversations with dd at this point, though I am not doing much to guide her as she can do that on her own; I'm just there to make encouraging noises. In her case, what she is planning to do is to audition for more practically based courses, and if that fails to take a year out working and do evening courses in acting. She has thought it through seriously, she knows it's not about dreams of stardom but about really wanting to do this kind of work, and she is prepared to let it take the time it takes and risk failing. I could never advise anyone to do that, but I'm not going to advise against it either.

And OP, lots of people get into the big drama schools who are not "posh"- wiry-haired northerners do actually get in.

"Performing arts" degrees cover a wider range of skills and activities than just acting; however, saying he isn't 'cut out to be an actor' because he's weak at some other aspects of the course seems strange to me - what are his grades for the acting modules/components like? If they're good - and his other modules are not so weak that he's likely to fail the entire course - I don't see why he shouldn't continue.

He doesn’t have any grades, all his feedback has been verbal and they didn’t have to video his performances because there were two tutors grading it, so nothing to look back at either.

I am very surprised it wasn't filmed especially as it is a PA degree given the whole point of PA is getting yourself on film so you can see how you look