Mary Sherry's Essay 'In Praise Of The F Word'

“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.

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.

The biggest failure any parent or student can think of is, dropping out of school. A

“ 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

Throughout the years failing has been seen as a way to defeat or put down a child or a student's moral. In the article “In praise of the ‘F’ word” by Mary Sherry, the author exhibits the fact that failing students should be seen as a positive idea in order to push kids to expel. Although some readers may argue that failing has a negative effect on a child's psychological development, many can argue that in order to develop a competent workforce, a more literate America, and push kids to excel in school failing should be seen as an affirmative idea.

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.

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 the article "In Praise of the F word" written by Mary Sherry. Sherry encourages all parents and teachers to use failure as a form of encouragement. Sherry would like for them to use it as a way to motivate students to do better and want more when it comes to their education. Sherry believes that the threat of flunking is a "positive teaching tool" (566). Sherry states that "tens of thousands od 18-year-olds will graduate this year and be handed meaningless diplomas."

The way in which failure has been viewed has changed over the centries. As early as ancient Athens, we have seen records of how failure is seen from time-to-time and society-to-society. Just them as a comparative to our society recognizes the cultural difference as well as the time gap between how we perceive defeat. For instance, Athens used plays to communicate that failing at something was okay and that we needed to show sympathy and helpfulness to those going through a rough time. Whereas today, as seen in many cases, dropping out of something, or even not succeeding is failure; you must do well in something to be respected. In the three sources presented, recordly, this is the case. Each source reviewed and discussed the art of failing as something more than just one mistake, that it is many complied onto each other causing, as we see it, catastrophe. In all three sources, they discusses success and failure seen in today’s society, which were then analyzed through agreement/overlap and disagreement.

In In Praise of the F Word, Mary Sherry points out that nowadays many high schools students have graduated with their poor reading and writing skills. Many of them finally have to find educational-repair shops to improve their skills because their employers discover that they are semiliterate. Also, she finds out that “such nice teachers” cause students to graduate with poor academic skills. Those teachers feel sorry about their miserable experiences such as terrible environment, drug abuse, and abusive relationships. Thus, those “such nice teachers” pass them even though they don’t come up to standards. Sherry believes that an appropriate amount of fears and threats can make students put schoolwork before other activities. Moreover, she asserts that if students ignore the warning, teachers should fail them because failing them can motivate students to learn, and they won’t regret in the future.

The main point of the article “Fail Safe Students” by Scott Carlson’s, is how failure is a setback that leads to heroism. We all know that failure is a moment that makes us question ourselves whether we keep moving on and fight for what we want or stay back and suffer the consequences. But nowadays people never want to experience failure as they think it’s the beginning cause of the problems. Where people should experience failure at a young age so they would learn the lesson and be successful throughout their lives. The author has written this article to make people aware that failing and recovering is a privilege where one can hope to experience. But many people don’t get second chances because the way of their lifestyles (poor). Experiencing

So don’t credit yourself as a failure, you’re worse than that.” We cannot live in fear of being vulnerable and of failure, or we will never get anywhere or make anything of ourselves. As hockey player legend Wayne Gretsky once said, “You will always miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.” It is time for us to take risks, but to also not be ignorant about the risks we take. We cannot try to change something once, and if it does not work, never try again. But we also cannot try to change something the same way multiple times because if it did not work the first time, it will probably not work the second or third and so on. Albert Einstein defines this as, “Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” We want the Class of 2012 to develop and grow into prospering, successful young men and women and in order to do this; we have to stop complaining, start appreciating, and start the change we want to see in the world. We regret more about the things we did not do than the things we did do. Get out of yourself, and just do it.

After reading the article, Embracing Failure: Building a Growth Mindset Through the Arts, I feel as if I have a new appreciation for not only critiquing work but failure in addition. I personally have always been terrified of failure, and it has restricted me from opportunities throughout my life, especially while I was still in high school. Even though I’ve evolved somewhat and can accept some risks now, this article provided me with information and tips to help my future students (and self) to embrace failures to utilize them as a learning experience rather than a blow to one’s self-esteem. I do believe that it is not an easy task as the students at the mentioned school spend years perfecting the practice to use it at its full potential.

As my first semester of college is coming to an end, I would like to reflect on my experience here within the Honors 120 and 121 class on Failure and the Question Wheel. I chose this class on failure because I have always held myself to such high standards that I hoped to be able to find a way to accept failure in some instances. Within our first week in class, we made claims about failure. My favorite claim was that every failure is in some way a success. Although this claim was not very debatable and incredibly generic, I was able to really let my mind explore what it was trying to say. Throughout the semester I experienced failure after failure, but that allowed me to see that success can still be achieved within failures.

In her essay, “In Praise of the ‘F’ Word” Mary Sherry argues that failure should be used as a teaching tool in schools. Many people today view failing students as a bad thing to do, when in reality failure can motivate students to do well and teach kids that they can’t slide by in life. This is why failing students’ needs to be reevaluated and turned into an affirmative teaching strategy. As children grow older they become more exposed to failure. By implementing failure as a teaching tool, children will not have such a rude awakening when it is time for them to grow up. This is why teachers need to use failure as an affirmative teaching strategy because the current school systems are failing in educating students and because of its many benefits.