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 the ability to compress a semester’s worth of content into a late night study rather than a reflection of hard work and thorough understanding of the subject. This evolution has occurred because the bluff of failure has never seemed like a reality.

A major flaw in our current school system is the effect that reputation has on a student's grade, regardless of the measure of motivation. If you don't have a poor reputation, teachers won't fail you. When you slip up, teachers try to encourage you and give you the benefit of the doubt. On the other side of the spectrum, if your reputation is lousy and your performance is unimpressive, teachers make very little effort to reach out because they believe you are too deep in your habits to reach their extended helping hand. It is easy to blame this on the school system, only because it is rare to see teachers search for underlying issues with these students. With that being said, conclusively, it is still up to the student to be self-driven and succeed. Once they are released into the ‘real world’, nobody is going to be there to push and nudge them to accomplish their ambitions

“Young people generally don't have the maturity to value education in the same way my adult students value it. But fear of failure, whether economic or academic, can motivate both.”. For most, the lurking worry of not succeeding is what pushes students to do enough to get by. Unfortunately, ‘doing enough to get by’ expires when you receive your high school diploma. Due to never being told this prior to that very moment, the overdue realization usually has devastating effects. The fear of failure is something that one should learn through trial and error, not through a threat that is never pursued.

In my opinion, Mary Sherry’s approach to the school system would prove to be successful. Failure is something that everyone will experience. How one deals with it is what defines them and not necessarily their accomplishments. A student who has been dealt all the perfect cards and receives a free ride through their education will never achieve their ambitions because they will set their bar too high. They feel the sense of invincibility. Once they reach the first collision on their road to success, they will shatter. Overwhelmed with the feeling of failure, something they've never experienced before. To summarize, failure must be present in our upbringing in order for us to be successful in adulthood. We must acquire the essential skill of transforming failure into motivation otherwise the detrimental effects of failure will cause us give up on our ambitions.