Page 110 - ELA_CA_HighSchool_Sampler_Flipbook

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William K. Zinsser (1922–2015), American critic and writer, was born in New York and educated at Princeton. He wrote articles for many leading magazines and newspapers and authored 17 books. He taught writing at Yale University, the New School, and Columbia University Graduate School.
Essay
The Right to Fail by William Zinsser
1 I like “dropout” as an addition to the American language because it’s brief and it’s clear. What I don’t like is that we use it almost entirely as a dirty word.
2 We only apply it to people under twenty-one. Yet an adult who spends his days and nights watching mindless TV programs is more of a dropout than an eighteen-year- old who quits college, with its frequently mindless courses, to become, say, a VISTA volunteer. For the young, dropping out is often a way of dropping in.
3 To hold this opinion, however, is little short of treason in America. A boy or
girl who leaves college is branded a failure—and the right to fail is one of the few freedoms that this country does not grant its citizens. The American dream is a dream of “getting ahead,” painted in strokes of gold wherever we look. Our advertisements and TV commercials are a hymn to material success, our magazine articles a toast to people who made it to the top. Smoke the right cigarette or drive the right car—so the ads imply—and girls will be swooning into your deodorized arms or caressing your expensive lapels. Happiness goes to the man who has the sweet smell of achievement. He is our national idol, and everybody else is our national fink.
4 I want to put in a word for the fink, especially the teen-age fink, because if we give him time to get through his finkdom—if we release him from the pressure of attaining certain goals by a certain age—he has a good chance of becoming our national idol, a Jefferson or a Thoreau, a Buckminster Fuller or an Adlai Stevenson, a man with a mind of his own. We need mavericks and dissenters and dreamers far more than we need junior vice presidents, but we paralyze them by insisting that every step be a step up to the next rung of the ladder. Yet in the fluid years of youth, the only way for boys and girls to find their proper road is often to take a hundred side trips, poking out in different directions, faltering, drawing back, and starting again.
5 “But what if we fail?” they ask, whispering the dreadful word across the Generation Gap to their parents, who are back home at the Establishment nursing their “middle-class values” and cultivating their “goal oriented society.” The parents whisper back: “Don’t!”
6 What they should say is “Don’t be afraid to fail!” Failure isn’t fatal. Countless people have had a bout with it and come out stronger as a result. Many have even come out famous. History is strewn with eminent dropouts, “loners” who followed their own trail, not worrying about its odd twists and turns because they had faith in their own sense of direction. To read their biographies is always exhilarating, not only because they beat the system, but because their system was better than the one that they beat. Luckily, such rebels still turn up often enough to prove that individualism,
lapel: folded flaps of cloth below the collar of a formal jacket or suit coat
fink: a person strongly disliked and viewed with contempt
maverick: an independent individual who does not conform to the group
dissenter: one who disagrees in matters of opinion and belief; a rebel
eminent: successful and respected
Unit 1 • The American Dream 93
ACTIVITY 1.17
continued
My Notes
ACTIVITY 1.17 continued
10 When students have completed their work with the 2004 Keynote Address, ask them to turn their attention to William Zinsser’s “The Right to Fail.”
11 FIRST READ: Based on the complexity of the passage and your knowledge of your students, you may choose to conduct the first reading in a variety of ways:
• independent reading • paired reading
• small-group reading
Text Complexity Overall: Complex
Lexile: 1240L
Qualitative: Moderate Difficulty Task: Challenging (Evaluate)
12 As students are reading, monitor their progress. Evaluate whether the selected reading mode is effective.
9781457304675_TCB_SE_G11_U1_B2.indd 93
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SCAFFOLDING THE TEXT-DEPENDENT QUESTIONS
5. Key Idea and Details (RI.11–12.3) How does the author’s choice to consider real and fictional examples of “dropouts” impact his argument? What real example of a dropout is discussed in paragraph 6? Which fictional example is discussed in paragraph 7? How do both examples support the author’s claim that “failure isn’t fatal”?
Unit 1 • The American Dream 93
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.