Fear of failing a class in school is near extinction. There is no more drive to do the best a student can. A student putting forth the hard work necessary to learn and prosper in school is disappearing. Hard work, effort, priority, and responsibility are just some of the concepts that are lost among today’s youth. There is no drive to do ones best when no one really expects it. Unfortunately, the only ones cheated in the new world “pass everybody” epidemic is the youth. America’s new generation is being passed, grade after grade, without actually gaining the knowledge needed to flourish in life. Luckily, there are those individuals out there that do not want to sit around and watch American students obtain a diploma that is teetering on the edge on meaningless.
Mary Sherry, author of “In Praise of the “F” Word”, talks about the long forgotten concept of flunking students. Sherry teaches a remedial adult education course and sees students every semester who, unfortunately, did not obtain the necessary knowledge in school to further his or her education beyond high school successfully. Sherry also tells the story of her own sons experience in high school with a teacher that refused to let the minimum slide by like so many other teachers would. Sherry’s words are encouraging to the future, because she accepted the rules of an educator even though it could have hurt her own son which many parents would not have done. Sherry realized that while wanting to protect her family from negative experiences, the fear of failure would give her son a better future.
The threat of flunking has to be real to inspire the student. Jacob Neusner’s essay, “The Speech the Graduates Didn’t Hear”, is a great example of false threats and ha...
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...nowledge than their peers and will pass down their lack of desire for education to their children. The cycle will continue unless there is something set forth to stop it. Education needs to become the first priority for students, teachers, and parents. Teachers should not be afraid to fail and student that did not show significant growth within his or her class. Parents should not intervene when a teacher does fail a child because of embarrassment or pride. And lastly, students must make education the most important part of his or her life. Learning needs to come before fun which, unfortunately, seems like a foreign concept to most youths today. There is so much more to gain from a proper education than just how to solve algebraic equations. When are we ever going to use this information in the real world? The answer to this question is simple, everyday.
An F is a grade that many students fear of obtaining in their school career, unless the student does not care about his or her education. In Carl Singleton’s article, What Our Education Needs is More F’s, Singleton expresses his belief that if students begin to receive more F’s, students would be working harder to earn good grades, parents would become more considerate of their child’s education, and teachers would be stricter and harsher when grading. Therefore, education systems requiring teachers to frequently give more F’s will fix the “inadequacies of American education,” or so Singleton believes. (Singleton). Unfortunately, Singleton’s plan if enforced, would have several negative effects to it, such as; students’ motivation would instead diminish rather than accelerate, students would not
How will this growing problem be fixed, not only in the United States but the world as well? One important action is to continue the effort to improve schools worldwide. Schools in poorer areas of districts would benefit from a greater number of better trained teachers and faculty. Other actions to help improve schools would be to add more leadership and extracurricular activities, encourage students to focus and stay in school, and making things such as school lunch and recess better. It is important to have students enjoy being at school and enjoy learning, otherwise they'll lose intere...
Those students with meaningless diplomas are the ones who have been cruising along even though they do not truly understand the materials that were taught to them. Those students that plainly do not understand the material taught to them make excuses. Teachers see these student’s excuses as a lack of attention and fail those students but instead all those students needed were a bit of guidance. It takes a teacher's involvement to understand, not a teacher's threat. Sherry argues that our educational system is to blame for cheating those students out of a proper education.
We live in a society where we are surrounded by people telling us that school/education and being educated is the only way to succeed. However, the school system is not up to the standards we want it to uphold. There are three issues we discuss the most which are the government, the student, and the teacher. In John Taylor Gatto 's essay “Against School”, we see the inside perspective of the educational system from the view of a teacher. In “I Just Wanna Be Average”, an essay written by Mike Rose, we hear a student 's experience of being in a vocational class in the lower level class in the educational system when he was supposed to be in the higher class. Both Gatto and Rose give their opinions on how the educational system is falling apart. Today the government is only trying to get students to pass, making it hard for teachers to teach what they want. Students are affected everyday by the school system. They sit there - bored - and do not think that the teachers care, making the
Another reason why the assignment of failing grades has decreased is the influence of the self-esteem movement, which promotes the assumption that children who do not have a positive self-image cannot learn or develop properly. Although this theory is widely accepted, it has been discredited by several studies. Recent research shows that, although American students felt more confident about themselves and their work, they were outperformed by several Asian countries on tests of elementary skills. American schools and teachers tend to worry more about the student’s self-esteem than the actual academic performance (Leo, “Damn” 21). Mary Sherry, a teacher of adult literacy programs, does not believe such theories. Her view is that students become motivated by the threat of failure, and that not failing a student not only shows lack of confidence on the teacher’s behalf, but also hurts the society as a whole. Employees are becoming highly disappointed with so-called “graduate” students (8).
...ild, when he would hide and daydream, up until his first years of college, when he would avoid areas that were difficult, the author recognized that there was important link between challenging the student on a meaningful level and the degree to which the student eventually produced. “I felt stupid telling them I was… well – stupid.” (Rose 43) Here, Rose shows an example of how poor preparation and low standards in the classroom can make a student feel inadequate. Indeed, one can see how many things seemingly unrelated do affect a student’s ability to learn.
Today, schools are making it a priority for teachers to follow the strict guidelines of a “one size fits all testing curriculum.” Educators must prepare students for the tests that could make or break their future. This curriculum is focused only on teaching students what they need to know in order to pass the test. “Because the test is based largely on the memorization of facts, teachers will have to teach their students these specific facts instead of teaching for deep comprehension and understanding of material.” (Martin, 309) As a result, students do not learn the true lesson. Although it is highly important that students pass “the test,” this strictly based curriculum is ignoring the important academic skills and fundamentals needed for their future, even beyond the years of high stakes testing; without these needed skills students will be left in the dark once they have graduated from high school. Students often learn on different levels and their educational requirements are not being met with the “one size fits all” approach. Those who create these tests tend not to include those who learn on a different educational level; rather their focus is pointed towards the money rather than on the success of all students. Children need to learn sk...
The new generation of the twenty first century has been given many well deserved titles, but being lazy is not one of them. High school exit exams have been a part of school curriculums since the 1800’s, and the first was administered in New York in 1878 under heavy controversy (Finkel 1). Opponents of the exit exam cite the lower graduation percentages, and how a grown adult without a diploma will suffer heavily in their adult lives. What many will not admit to is that the benefits of these exit exams are equally as far reaching as the so called “cons” of the tests. The high school exit exam encourages teachers to push their students, and set a national standard for high school achievement to ensure American students are prepared for the international and collegiate levels.
As President Obama exclaimed, “When students don’t walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma” (Source 2). If the age requirement is raised to 18, students will believe that only a couple of months is needed to succeed and receive a diploma. Effectively, it increases the adolescent's choice to graduate. Paul Leather proclaims, “What it does is it sets the moral imperative so that students, parents, educators become committed to the idea that the student will infact graduate” (Source 2). The dropout age requirement can not only motivate young adults but the teachers and parents too. The extra motivation from the groups may be enough to push children through high school. Whilst school is a proven avenue to betterment, children may have obstacles that might persuade them to
However, such accusations such as laziness and entitlement, although common, have been prevalent amongst those of college age as proven in “A’s for Everyone.” Shepard had investigated the cause behind this and had put the blame on grade inflation in the years prior to entering college, the pressure to get superb grades due to high tuition costs, and most importantly the belief that “effort” constitutes a grade bonus. However, if one has entered the school system in America, one could see the relative ease in which one could improve their grades through inordinate amounts of extra credit. Multiple students have heard and even seen fellow students ask their parents to even come in for meetings of which equate to blaming their child’s poor grades on the teacher and harassing said teacher to allow their child, soon to be a hardworking, productive citizen of society, to get the “grade they
Sadly over 40 years later, the the educational revolution still hasn't taken off. The “pieces” are still lying around unassembled and the education in the schools is still tolerated. The need for change of public schools in the United States has been emerging since of the the passage of Pennsylvania's Common School Act in 1834. The Common School Act of 1834, set up a "general” system of education by common schools. People are continuously saying how children are the future and we must nurture them in order to ensure a bright future for our country. However, we are failing at a very basic level. The current education system in the United States is extremely poor. Drop-out rates for high school students continue to rise and student performance has been steadily declining. An article published in 1999 showed exactly how much of a crisis the American education system is really in. The article was written by William J. Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education, and it ranked high school seniors form 21 industrialized nations based on their performance in math, science, and advanced physics. American high school seniors ranked 19th in math, 16th in science and last in advanced physics.
Schools across America told their pupils to get good grades or they will never get out of their hometowns and experience the world. Schools drilled into student’s heads that if they don’t study and make it to the top ten, they will be a nobody. I have to disagree with my school’s philosophy. As film director Stanley Kubrick once said, “I think the big mistake in schools is […] using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a
It is obvious that most parents around the globe like their children to be educated. In today’s world, education means higher living standards due to the globalization of industry and competence. My parents are an example for such ambition of pushing children into the intimacy of studying to guarantee a sustainable future. Even thought my family lives in one of the highly educated districts in Baghdad, most parents in this district believe that education is a subjective matter. Therefore, the only goal of students in my district is to attain a minimum passing grade because nobody asks them more than that, even their teachers. In other words, students consider school as a community to have fun instead of earning knowledge. The main reason for such behavior is due to the political situation of Iraq before 2003. At that time, even though a person may hold a degree in engineering, he would work for the government with little salary that is not enough for living. Therefore, educated people at that time have no value for education; they simply know that college education is not enough to build a successful carrier. They feel
People usually afraid of failure because they tried to do something and failed, or took a risk and it didn’t pay off, or made a decision and it turned out to be the wrong one. That fear of failure create the stress and anxiety when people want to do something hard or try something new. Just because you tried something two or three time and failing does not mean the entire idea is a mistake. Do you expect to get a Blackjack on every game that you played? That would be an impossible thing to do. There is no success that comes without failure, where failure is experiences and lessons that help you to perfect your works. People should overcome their fear of failure and use failure as a tool to work toward their success because failing is so important
Are the new standards and expectations the world has for teenagers really creating monsters? The amount of stress that is put on students these days between trying to balance school, homework, extra curricular activities, social lives, sleep and a healthy lifestyle is being considered as a health epidemic (Palmer, 2005). Students are obsessing over getting the grades that are expected of them to please those that push them, and in return, lose sleep and give up other aspects of their lives that are important to them such as time with friends and family as well as activities that they enjoy. The stress that they endure from the pressures of parents, teachers, colleges, and peers have many physical as well as mental effects on every student, some more harmful than others. The extreme pressure on students to get perfect grades so that they will be accepted into a college has diminished the concept of actually learning and has left the art of “finagling the system” in order to succeed in its place (Palmer, 2005). There are many ways that should be implemented in order to reduce the stress on students so that they can thrive because, withoutthem, the school systems will only be creating generations of stressed out, materialistic, and miseducated students (Palmer, 2005).