Molly - English 12

In Praise of the F Word “In Praise of the F Word”, is an article written by Mary Sherry, a teacher who believes that students can benefit from failure being used as a threat in the school system. Mary believes that too many unmerited graduates are released into the post secondary world. Too many students squeeze by and pass classes simply because the teachers don't want to fail them and set them back. Mary believes that disciplining bad behaviour is beneficial before it becomes a habit and that this can be done through threatening failure. It is believed that with the fear of failing being present in student’s lives, they will work harder to avoid earning the title of a failure and therefore succeed later in life. In my opinion, the school system is much too cushioned. Too many teachers have become paper pushers who grade papers based on the charisma of a student rather than their intelligence. Grades have become a reflection of the acceptance of overdue assignments and th...

Class Dismissed In his article, "Class Dismissed," Walter Kirn argues that the grade 12 school year is a redundant year, that could be better used to prepare young men and women for their adult lives. He describes grade 12 students as being stuck in a "holding pattern"  and a "fidgety waiting period." Kirn believes many students are actually ready for Post Secondary education in their twelfth grade, and since they spend so many years studying, it would be more valuable overall, if study time could be reduced by one year, so they could get on with their postgraduate careers earlier. Also, those students who would prefer to enter the labour force after high school, are forced to stay and take courses they know they will never need in life, so they can get the credits to graduate from high school.  Many of these students, who are already working evening jobs, skip classes because they are too exhausted or because there aren't enough hours to get all ...

Best Kids Books are Written in Blood Sherman Alexie, an American novelist writes about how he expresses his childhood struggles of poverty and physical/sexual abuse through his writing and using it to assist others in their troubles. “I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters.”. His book is everything that he wish he had been told in his adolescence. Alexie believes that youth benefit from raw material and sheltering children who are struggling a trauma does nothing for them. “They wanted to protect me from sex when I had already been raped. They wanted to protect me from evil though a future serial killer had already abused me. They wanted me to profess my love for God without considering that I was the child and grandchild of men and women who’d been sexually and physically abused by generations of clergy”. Many youth read books with graphic content because it gi...

Allowing Teenage Boys to Love Their Friends This piece of writing examines the unaddressed issues in our society involving the importance of intimate male friendships. Hoffman states that as boys age, they become less open about the value of having close male friends. In contrast, most women possess pride in their relationships and codependency is seen as more respectable. Hoffman expresses, “Despite stereotypes of teenage boys as grunting, emotionally tone-deaf creatures who bond over sports talk and risk-taking, their need for intimate friendship is as potent as it is for girls”. How is it that two genders of the same species have such psychological and physiological expectations? The answer to that is linked directly to stereotypes regarding the contrast of male and female roles. Men are expected to be independent and be fiercely protective of their right to self-determinate themselves and their lifestyles. This stereotype-driven expectation is asserted into boys at a young...