To Pass or Not to Pass
English 201A
April 7, 2013
To Pass or Not to Pass It’s the end of your senior year, you’ve managed to pass all your classes except for one it was hard for you to make this class because of family issues at home so a lot of the assignments you did not turn in. Do you think it’s fair for the teacher to let you do one assignment that’ll raise your grade enough to let you graduate? After reading Julie Barlow’s essay “Should Teachers Let Failing Students Pass by doing an ‘Extra Credit’ Assignment?” I did understand where she was coming from seeing as though I am a student and sometimes life does get in between education, but at the same time she contradicted herself by saying she only lets certain students because she cannot trust all, well if that’s the case what if the chosen ones are actually just really good liars? Then I read Carla Estrada’s reaction “Just Say No To Extra Credit For Rescuing Failing Students” I agreed with this much more if a student has been failing all year they shouldn’t wait to the last minute to get any type of special treatment especially if it isn’t for everybody. As a now college student I can say that giving out last minute extra credit to certain students is definitely rare once you graduate from high school. Barlow had said that students tend to feel like they’re just numbers but once you get to college not every professor is going to know who you are they are just going to come to their job and that is teach you and if you fail then you fail. In life nothing is given to you have to earn it and if teachers constantly give students leeway they’ll learn nothing once they get into the real world because they’ll think they could just get their way and they cannot. It’s the matter of growing up and taking care of what matters and teachers shouldn’t baby that. As said before, everybody has problems whether it’s inside their homes or outside but teachers shouldn’t excuse that for a failing student especially if they have been failing
April 7, 2013
To Pass or Not to Pass It’s the end of your senior year, you’ve managed to pass all your classes except for one it was hard for you to make this class because of family issues at home so a lot of the assignments you did not turn in. Do you think it’s fair for the teacher to let you do one assignment that’ll raise your grade enough to let you graduate? After reading Julie Barlow’s essay “Should Teachers Let Failing Students Pass by doing an ‘Extra Credit’ Assignment?” I did understand where she was coming from seeing as though I am a student and sometimes life does get in between education, but at the same time she contradicted herself by saying she only lets certain students because she cannot trust all, well if that’s the case what if the chosen ones are actually just really good liars? Then I read Carla Estrada’s reaction “Just Say No To Extra Credit For Rescuing Failing Students” I agreed with this much more if a student has been failing all year they shouldn’t wait to the last minute to get any type of special treatment especially if it isn’t for everybody. As a now college student I can say that giving out last minute extra credit to certain students is definitely rare once you graduate from high school. Barlow had said that students tend to feel like they’re just numbers but once you get to college not every professor is going to know who you are they are just going to come to their job and that is teach you and if you fail then you fail. In life nothing is given to you have to earn it and if teachers constantly give students leeway they’ll learn nothing once they get into the real world because they’ll think they could just get their way and they cannot. It’s the matter of growing up and taking care of what matters and teachers shouldn’t baby that. As said before, everybody has problems whether it’s inside their homes or outside but teachers shouldn’t excuse that for a failing student especially if they have been failing
Cited: Barlow, Julie. "Should Teachers Let Failing Students Pass by Doing an 'Extra Credit ' Assignment." Sentences, Paragraphs and Beyond with Readings. 7th ed. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2014. 140. Print. Estrada, Carla. "Just Say No to Extra Credit for Rescuing Failing Students." Print.