In this passage, Mary Sherry strongly suggests and persuades us to believe that the simple thought of failure actually motivates people to be successful throughout their lifetime. Whether the motivation comes early in life, or after many years of learning experiences and disappointments, we all come across a controversial time of our life when falling short of our goals and aspirations is a prominent fear. To get her point across, Sherry tells us about a personal experience involving her son who was a high school senior at the time. Her son had been a straight A student all his life, and then one day he suddenly started to struggle in an english class. His mother, the author of “In Praise of the F Word”, pleaded with the teacher and asked if she could move his seat or search for another solution, but the teacher simply stated she was going to flunk him. Sherry went home and told her son that, and it turned out to be just enough for her son to make english a priority in his life and successfully complete the semester with an A. …show more content…
We can infer that the author teaches a night class that is full of adults who wish they had put forth more effort and excelled earlier in life, but were instead passed on by teachers that didn’t foresee the troubles that it would cause for the student when put into the workforce. One of Sherry’s students says, “I was a good kid and didn’t cause any trouble, so they just passed me on even though I didn’t read or write.” This adds to the truism that as we grow older and mature, we learn to appreciate our education and the teachers that helped us along the way more and