Mary Sherry In Praise Of The F Word Summary

Mary Sherry, who is both a mother and a teacher, shares from her life experience, a revealing reality in the educational system. She goes on to share how this experience has impacted her view of how students can be better motivated to learn. The title of the piece, "In Praise of the F Word", is a great title that catches the readers' attention and leads to a final revelation that leaves the reader both disturbed and in the case of this reader, delighted that there are teachers who recognize the shortfall of an education that moves students through the system without insuring that students have actually learned the skills that were taught.

Jessica Statsky wrote an essay where she expressed her thoughts on young kids competitive in sports. Statsky made it very clear in her essay that she was completely against kids participating in competitive sports. Personally, I disagree with Starsky's statement, I believe that being in a competitive sport has many more advantages rather than disadvantages. Being on a sports team since a young age can teach kids how to cope with failure as well as the empowering feeling of winning. Teams teach kids to be able to work with others despite the differences that might exist between teammates, it teaches them teamwork and how to grow up and get better in working in teams because teams are everywhere; work, school, church, meeting and in many other places.

“ In praise of the F word” by Mary Sherry, the author has her point that flunking students is a way that can help students do better in school. Flunking students can be helpful in getting them motivated and lead to success in their education. Students who don’t want to put in effort because they are lazy, a troublemaker, or good student that gets just passed along to next grade deserve to fail. Is it not going to be easy for students to be successful in their education. The students need to try hard to get to their goals. The students have to pass through failure to have the motivation to do better in school. If more students go through the teacher’s threats of failing, the students will want to put in the effort to able

As I discussed earlier in my writtings, I think that failure cannot be avoided and we are presented with failures to gain an opportunity to learn. Failures will be an aspect at some point professionally and or personally so that we can grow and develop as

Arum and Roksa found that colleges and universities have shifted their focus because of the change in society. They now try to accommodate the students to make college life more fun and entertaining. Students have become so used to being catered to and prioritizing entertainment, that they make up so many excuses as to why they shouldn’t get so much homework and that they do not have time to do it. Yet, students still expect great results from their poor academic commitment. Arum and Roksa quoted Barbara Schneider and David Stevenson describing the prevalence of “drifting dreamers with high ambitions, but no clear life plans for achieving them.”

In “In Praise of the F Word” Mary Sherry focuses not on how the difficulties that the students have to face affect their performance in school, but how the “fear of failure” compels them to work. Sherry believes that diplomas are meaningless; because most passing students did not master the work. Additionally, some high school graduates told her that they do not even know how they get the diplomas. She believes that the fluning policy is “an expression of confidence by both parents and teachers” (Sherry 560).And we should give the students the choice to be success or fail. Sherry falsely assumes that flunking a student will make the students perform better at school.

Dr. Tim Elmore, author of 12 Huge Mistakes Parents Can Avoid states, "While we parents hate seeing our kids fail, I don't think we can truly mature without facing it in life--and the earlier, the better." Everyone fails and the sooner parents stop protecting their children from this reality, the quicker they can move on and mature. This also allows those who deserve to accel to feel like they worked hard for a purpose. Elmer furthers his argument, saying, "Kids who've never tested their abilities grow into emotionally brittle young adults who are more vulnerable to anxiety and depression.” Failure is not always the worst option. It can be used as a coach and shouldn’t always be feared. Failure is a part of life and kids need to learn to accept it. Participation awards are taking away from this life

“In Praise of the ‘F’ word” is a short story written by Mary Shelly which demonstrates the deficiencies within the educational system. No student should be allowed to move onto the following grade just because a teacher cannot tolerate him or her in the classroom. Shelly illustrates this within the story as she tells the reader that she is in agreeance with the teacher’s policy of failing her students. Because of this the reader will realize that students should put in their maximum effort in the classroom instead of diminishing their studies. Once students grow up and move onto their responsibilities in the future, the ones who took school seriously will have an easier time handling those things rather than the ones who slacked off in school. Students should not be afraid to flunk classes because it matures them and prepares them for their future, and gives them a sense of accomplishment when they pass the class.

Chapter 39 of Kaleidoscope, written by William Damon, discusses why students within our education system struggle with wanting to succeed. His argument is that students have no sense of determination when it comes to working hard in school because there “is a question of the purpose behind the requirements [in school],” with many students wondering “why is schooling useful in the first place?” (Damon 2008/2013 p. 287). If students feel that there is no reason to succeed, then they will obviously have less drive to complete educational tasks. Damon did a study of students and categorized the students into three groups: those who have purpose, those who don’t, and the middle ground between the two.

When I look at the word failure I didn’t see success. But that slowly changed as I read the book What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain Chapter four. Bain, for me and I’m sure many other, have changed our view point on failure being a bad thing. He instead expressed failure as an “opportunity to learn something.” (121) As infants we grow and develop, we learn to walk by falling down a couple hundred times, and we learn to speak by babbling. By trying to walk, and trying to talk, we may fail at first. As an infant, you cannot give up when you are face to face with failure. You must get up and try again to learn. In the book, What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain he uses people’s experiences and research to explain why failure is an opportunity to learn something new, rather than seeing failure as something bad. He asserts “people who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge failures, even to embrace them, and to explore and learn from them.” (100) Failure is important. If we did not get up and try again as infants, we would not be where we are today.

Through out my high school career I never took my education seriously. For most of the four years it was a big blur. I’m not quite sure if it was because of me or if I found myself blaming my surroundings or teachers for my lack of focus and strive to learn. A failure can mean different things to everyone else. Maybe there’s just different types or categories of failures. These failures are meant to teach us something, or motivate us to simply not make these mistakes again.

Have you ever started packing your stuff to leave class, when your teacher calls out you name and tells you to stay for min to talk about you failing class? Students have different mind sets of learning and actually understanding something. When a student goes to school, each student have different needs to understand the material in the class. In the "Praise of the "F" word by Mary Sherry argues that many high schools students have been “cheated by our educational system” because they have been allowed to graduate even though they remain “semi literate”(519). Therefore she argues that education is not a priority unless you give them consequences for poor grades and by doing so teachers should fail them.

In a classroom setting, it may be clear that most students are more extrinsically motivated to undertake their academic work, even though for some, it could be inherent extrinsic motivation, an example being, a student who understands that studying hard and doing assignments has a bigger reward in the long-term, as they will pass exams and attain good grades. In the same class could be another student who does assignments to avoid sanctions by teachers or parents (Lepper, Corpus and Iyengar, 2005). Both of these examples showcase students who are extrinsically motivated to study even though one appears to be more inherently thoughtful of their own benefit, while the other is doing it just to avoid punishment and is more dependent on the teacher’s or parent’s reaction. Children mostly do things that are

Traditionally, failure is seen as a negative concept and is defined as lacking success. I, on the other hand, try to put a positive spin on everything in life. I see failure as an obstacle that is experienced by all, but it does not define an individual. Failure in essence will force an individual to be more receptive to their surroundings and actions and also will force an individual to mature. Looking back on my childhood years I can now pinpoint the areas where I failed and I can confidently say that I have grown and prospered due to those failures. The three major failures I have experienced were my attention deficit issues which affected my ability to succeed in school, my anti-social habit that I let consume my early years, and my

Failure is an important part of life because when you fail you can turn it into a success.