In Mary Sherry's story “In Praise of the F Word” Mary explains that today's education is deceiving our children and future employers by letting children through before they are ready to leave our education system. Mary is a teacher at an adult literacy program, who previously blamed divorce, drugs and other problems for children not doing well in school. Mary learned from her experience with her son that one of the most effective ways to motivate a young student is to allow him to fail. Because teachers outperform students so easily, Mary believes that students don't feel motivated to do the best they could. Mary believes that if failing became a normal thing, the fear of failure would prevent students from cheating and focusing more on their education. I believe 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 that struck me in this article was when Mary told readers about her son. Mary was told that her son was not doing well in class because of his social behavior and that he was not motivated. This was putting his son at risk of failure. Instead of overreacting like most parents would, Mary realized that failure was the right option, and so she informed her son that he would fail if he didn't start trying harder. When I was a child I wished someone like Mary or her teacher would push me to push myself. I feel like most kids go all the way through school without needing to push themselves, for example, while I was growing up I went through most of high school doing little to no homework in many of my classes, but I still managed to graduate. I feel like when I was in high school I didn't understand… middle of the paper… F Word” offers a whole new look at how students are educated and provides a meaningful opinion on what should be done to help students learn better . I feel that Mary brings with her a lot of knowledge from the experience she has gained from teaching an adult class and having children attend the school. This article inspired me to not look at failure so negatively. This article also made me think that passing averages for high school courses should be increased significantly to ensure that we are not cheating our children and that they have enough knowledge to get them ahead in life. I believe many students, including myself, can benefit from Mary's theory that failure should be a tool used by teachers to motivate students. If I had been retained rather than passed away like many other students today, I could have completed college and already had a stable career and achieved my goals.