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In Mary Sherry’s short story “In Praise of the F Word” Mary discusses that today’s education is cheating our children and future employers by passing children before they are ready to leave our education system. Mary is a teacher of an adult literacy program, who before would blame divorce, drugs and other problems for children not doing well in school. Mary learned by her experience with her son that one of the most effective ways to motivate a young student is by allowing the student to fail. Because teachers would pass students so easily, Mary believes students do not feel motivated to do the best that they could. Mary believes if “Flunking” was made a normal thing the fear of failure would stop students from cheating themselves and focusing more on their education. I believe that many students including myself, can benefit from Mary’s theory that failure should be a tool used by teachers to motivate students.
The first thing in this article that stood out to me was when Mary told the readers about her son. Mary was told that her son was not doing well in class due to his social behavior and that he was not motivating himself. This was leading her son at the risk of failure. Instead of over reacting as most parents would, Mary understood that failure was the right option, and then informed her son that he would fail if he doesn’t begin to try harder. When I was a child I wish someone like Mary or his teacher would have pushed me to push myself. I feel most children go throughout school without needing to push themselves for instance, while I was growing up I went through much of high school doing little to no homework in many of my classes, but was still able to graduate. I feel when I was in high school I did not understan...

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... F Word” delivers a whole new look on how students are being educated and gives a signal opinion on what should be done to help students learn better. I feel Mary carries a lot of knowledge from experience from teaching an adult course and having children going through school. This article inspired me to not look at failure in such a negative way. This article also made me feel that the passing averages of high school courses should be raised significantly to ensure we are not cheating our children and they have sufficient knowledge to Carrie them through life. I believe that many students including myself can benefit from Mary’s theory that failure should be a tool used by teachers to motivate students. If I was held back rather than passed off like many other students today I could have completed college and been already into a steady carrier achieving my goals.

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