Teacher Criticizes The ‘F Students Are Inventors’ Trend For Glorifying Bad Behavior In Class
There's nothing wrong with making lower grades, but behaving badly is never okay.
Ground Picture | Shutterstock New trends take over social media in about as much time as it takes to make one post. When a man shared his thoughts on how grades don’t necessarily correlate with greatness, he had plenty of people supporting him and using his audio in their own TikToks.
The man was likely trying to play off the quote by Harry S. Truman, who said, "C students run the world." But what he failed to acknowledge was that schools and the education system as a whole are in crisis, and kids with Fs aren't quirky and creative. They are in danger of graduating without the basic skills to get by in today's world, including reading and math.
An influencer told ‘F students’ they were doing just fine because they would go on to be inventors.
In a video with nearly a quarter of a million likes on TikTok, fitness influencer and entrepreneur Ben Azoulay shared his controversial opinion regarding students who received Fs in school. The audio from his video has since been deleted, but the subtitles are still available.
“If you’re a young boy, and you’re in a situation where you’re an F student, let me tell you something,” Azoulay said. “You got a bright future, buddy.” He described how every kind of student aligns with a different professional journey, like A students being good employees and C students being business owners. “And then you got the F students are inventors,” he shared.
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Although some commenters expressed skepticism over Azoulay’s ideas, with one even calling him “a lunatic rage baiter,” the concept that “F students are inventors” still took off, so much so that several detractors took notice, including a concerned teacher.
The teacher shared her alarm at the ‘F students are inventors’ trend.
Kay Pal, a teacher with her own TikTok account, shared her unfiltered thoughts on Azoulay’s “F students are inventors” declaration and the ensuing trend. “If you ever wonder what the kind of behaviors that high school and middle school teachers are dealing with on a regular basis, you need to search ‘F students are inventors,’” she said gravely. “And a lot of the videos to that sound are going to be the kind of behavior that teachers are putting up with in this day and age.”
Pal wanted to make it clear that what she was saying was not a blanket statement that applied to every student, or even every student with low grades. “But it’s often enough, it’s regular enough, that probably every teacher that’s taught for a year or two has had several students that would fit in this trend,” she insisted. “And it doesn’t take a lot of students, it just takes one to reroute your entire day as an educator.”
Even some students admitted they disagreed with the trend. A young man named Cary, who has a motivational study account on the app, refuted the idea. He said, “Just because Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out does not mean they were F students. As a matter of fact, they were probably straight-A students.”
Another TikToker named Ivan, who provides commentary on other users’ videos, shared his own thoughts on the trend as well. Over a montage of clips from the videos that used Azoulay’s audio, he described some of the students’ actions, including moving ceiling tiles to hide chairs above them and testing their schools’ bathroom drainage systems. He recommended one “steer clear” of those students.
There’s nothing wrong with having low grades, but it’s also not necessarily something that should be glorified.
There’s a stigma surrounding students who make lower grades, which isn’t really fair. Some students can be very smart but not test well or perform well academically. Making grades that would be thought of as bad doesn’t mean they are lazy or not trying hard enough.
Charles W. Cole, the president of Amherst College, researched this very topic and found that grades, specifically in college, are not necessarily indicators of later success in life. So, F students very well could be inventors. But glorifying an attitude of not caring about school to the point that you’re placing classroom chairs on the ceiling isn’t good for students either.
The truth is, every child is unique and gifted in his or her own right, but glorifying bad behavior or giving kids a pass not to try and not to learn is simply silly. Can F students become great and successful inventors while A students fail in their career paths? Absolutely! But you know what's highly unlikely? Teaching kids that they don't need to try because it will all work out in the end.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
