Refusal to Fail

When most people think of the No-Child-Left-Behind Law most think about not letting children fail. Yet, in classrooms all over children put their heads down on desk rather than doing problems and nothing is being done to prevent this. Gloria Ladson-Billings, in her essay “I ain’t writin’ nuttin’: Permissions to Fail and Demands to Succeed in Urban Classroom” in The Skin that We Speak, gives readers an inside look into a young girl’s refusal to write a sentence. The teachers response to the student was “‘That’s okay. Maybe you’ll feel like writing tomorrow.” (110). Ladson-Billings calls this “‘permission to fail’” (110). I feel like this happens too often and it is a really hard situation to deal with. At the same time there are techniques that can employed to help engage student’s interest in the subject matter.

A lot of times when students are given an assignment they wonder “Why do we have to do this stupid thing?” This is because assignment are often not engaging. In addition, teachers tend to take an elitist approach to the fact they are teachers and force the students to complete the assignments. Ladson-Billings offers a different approach to instruction. It is one that takes into account the students interest so that they will be inspired to learn and complete the material. In addition to the students interests, it must parallel the students literacy level, therefore it must reflect on previous knowledge. At the same time it must grow the students literacy and show students how it can be paired with “conventional forms of literacy” (117). In order to achieve this lessons must be thought-out and well planned. Also the teacher must be adaptable to change a lesson if it is not achieving the desired result.

There is also an ethics perspective to letting students. Often when students give up they are thought of as lazy. I feel they simply don’t understand the implications of their decisions. Even if it is explained to them they still may not understand, therefore it is up to educators to make engaging lessons to keep students focused. Then hopefully in time they will understand the importance to their actions.