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Tens of thousands of 18-year-olds will graduate this year and be handed meaningless diplomas. These diplomas won’t look any different from those awarded their luckier classmates. Their validity will be questioned only when their employers discover that these graduates are semiliterate(半文盲). ually a fortunate few will find their way into educational-repair shops—-literacy programs, such as the one where I teach basic grammar and writing. There, high-school graduates and high-school dropouts pursuing graduate-equivalency certificates will learn the skills they should have learned in school. They will also discover they have been cheated by our educational system. I will never forget a teacher who got the attention of one of my children by revealing the trump card of failure. Our youngest, a world-class charmer, did little to develop his intellectual talents but always got by. Until Mrs. Stifter. Our son was a high-school senior when he had her for English. "He sits in the back of the room talking to his friends," she told me. "Why don’t you move him to the front row" I urged, believing the embarrassment would get him to settle down. Mrs. Stifter said, "I don’t move seniors. I flunk(使…不及格) them." Our son’s academic life flashed before my eyes. No teacher had ever threatened him. By the time I got home I was feeling pretty good about this. It was a radical approach for these times, but, well, why not "She’s going to flunk you," I told my son. I did not discuss it any further. Suddenly English became a priority(头等要事) in his life. He finished out the semester with an A. I know one example doesn’t make a case, but at night I see a parade of students who are angry for having been passed along until they could no longer even pretend to keep up. Of average intelce or better, they ually quit school, concluding they were too dumb to finish. "I should have been held back," is a comment I hear frequently. Even sadder are those students who are high-school graduates who say to me after a few weeks of class, "I don’t know how I ever got a high-school diploma." Passing students who have not ed the work cheats them and the employers who expect graduates to have basic skills. We excuse this dishonest behavior by saying kids can’t learn if they come from terrible environments. No one seems to stop to think that most kids don’t put school first on their list unless they perceive something is at risk. They’d rather be sailing. Many students I see at night have decided to make education a priority. They are motivated by the desire for a better job or the need to hang on to the one they’ve got. They have a healthy fear of failure. People of all ages can rise above their problems, but they need to have a reason to do so. Young people generally don’t have the maturity to value education in the same way my students value it. But fear of failure can motivate both.

How did Mrs. Sifter get the attention of one of the author’s children