Rethinking #Failure

Growing up, we often heard the expression “Failure is not an option.”

I recently attended a seminar in which the speaker, distinguished standards-based grading advocate Rick Wormeli, said that he wishes schools would move away from this expression – stating that students see failure as something bad, something to be avoided.

Wormeli advised rethinking the idea of failure, stating, rather, that to F.A.I.L. signifies First Attempt In Learning.

Having heard this acronym in the past, and already being a fan, I paused to reflect on the original failure motto.

Famously (yet erroneously) attributed to Gene Kranz, flight director of Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle missions, I always interpreted the quote to mean that you can´t, nor should you, stop when you fail. Failure is not only an option, it is the way to success.  If the people involved in trying to bring Apollo 13 home had failed, then the mission would have ended.  Instead, they kept troubleshooting, kept failing, until they succeeded.

Wormeli went on to share our first attempts and how failing actually pushes us forward.

• When you are learning to walk, as a baby or a toddler, you don´t quit because you fall you on your butt, do you?  Nope, you pull yourself up, and with the encouragement of loved ones, try again. If we stopped at failure, we would still be crawling well into our adult years.
• When you are learning to ride a bike, you don´t quit because you fell off and scraped your knee, do you?  Nope, you get back on the bike, and start peddling again, with the help of someone holding the back of your bike as you literally get your wheels under you. If we stopped at failure, we would still be laying on the side of the road, holding our scraped knee.
• When you are learning to swim, you don´t quit because of a little thrashing about in the water.  Nope, you get back in the pool, and just keep swimming, until you are comfortable staying afloat in the water. If we stopped at failure, we would be floating face down in the pool, having let ourselves drowned.

Ultimately, students who take ownership of their learning, also take responsibility for how and what they learn.  Gone are the days where you are expected to ¨fill your bucket with knowledge¨”- it´s as William Butler Yeats said, ¨Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.¨

 

And YOU must be the one who lights the fire. 

If you wait for your parents, your teachers, your friends, etc. to fill the pail or light the fire, then you are being PASSIVE in your role as a learner – and there is no greater travesty.

Students should fail and fail often.  It is only by picking oneself up and trying again until you are successful, that you truly master whatever it is you are trying to learn.

Dr. Tae, physicist and skateboarding champion, shares how applying the same principles of learning how to skateboard, to school, can actually help students find more success from failure.

To read more on the topic, check out Fahkryś article,  This is Why Failure is Not an Option, But a Prerequisite for Success.