Feb 18 2009
Freedom to Fail
Let’s face it- to most people failure is bad. In some cases, when the failure is disastrous and irrecoverable, it is bad. We are only allowed one fatal error per lifetime. However, most of the time our errors are simply a part of the natural journey toward success. Yet we avoid errors and failures like the plague. It is now a routine fact that schools and teachers are regularly being assessed to see if they are “failing” or not.
According to Randy Nelson of Pixar,
The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not error avoidance.
Thomas Edison when developing the incandescent light bulb found 10,000 ways that would not work but finally one that did. Mistakes and failure is a natural part of the process, but we punish those who take risks and experience short term failures. I believe this is a big part of what is wrong with our educational system.
I’m enjoying Seth Godin’s book “Tribes” right now. I just finished reading his description of the history of the factory. According to Godin, a factory is “an organization that cranks out a product or service, does it with measurable output, and tries to reduce costs as it goes. I mean any job where your boss tells you what to do and how to do it.”
He continues, saying factories provide “stability and the absence of responsibility”. In factories, you are doing your job if you just do what the boss says to do. They are perceived as safe; again with the “error avoidance”.
The trouble with the stability and security of factories is that it’s a lie. It doesn’t exist. A quick look at the news today can verify this. In today’s world, the organizations that busily avoid mistakes and failures producing mediocre results will soon be bypassed by true innovators and risk takers.
When Seth Godin describes the factory, I see the modern school. Our schools were designed to supply the world with factory workers, but we haven’t noticed that our approach has turned our schools into factories as well. Factories full of workers who do what the boss says, who enjoy a safe and stable environment, who take no risks, and as a result normally turn out mediocre results.
For teaching to be the “dream job” that Godin describes in Tribes, a job where someone actually has control over what he/she does all day, producing a product or service they can be proud of, having authority over their own time and effort and input into decision making, we need to enable and reward teachers who take risks and not punish them when those risks suffer the inevitable short-term setbacks.
Like it or not, we are in a new age where “good enough” is no longer good enough.
7 responses so far
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Great post! I have for a long time been a proponent of error analysis in my classrooms, but the issue has always been you have to make a mistake first before you can analyze what you did wrong. Students are not trained to look at errors as a way to learn, but as you so ably say in your post to avoid errors because they show weakness.
I know with the focus on test results that is pervasive in today’s educational setting many people will not allow your message to sink in, but I think it’s a critical that we begin to look at creating routines in our classrooms that maximize opportunities to learn. Error analysis and making errors a jumping on point makes sense to me. Thanks again for pushing our thinking.
Good reading here. In my kindergarten class, it may be easier. I set the bar at “the best you can do.” The children are asked if their product is their best work. They look me square in the eye and say yay or nay. Sometimes it means – take it back and work on it some more. Other times it’s “Do you think you can do better the next time?” This works very well in a whole group lesson as the children like to be their own toughest critic. They can explain what they don’t like about their own work and it sets up an environment where we are working toward our own goals of greatness. The other kids become your cheerleaders.
How fun to work with kindergarteners! They are so honest. The older they get, the more conditioned they are to never be wrong. If we could only sustain this attitude of always doing your best and learning from your mistakes.
One of the reasons I enjoy Love and Logic so much is because their philosophy actually hopes for failure! Give a kid a job you know he can do, then hope that he messes up. Then feel really bad for them (with empathy) that it didn’t work out and encourage them to try to do better next time.
Humans learn best from their own failures, but sometimes we make the price of failing seem too high.
In my own experience with blogging and online PD, the failures can frustrate me no end. If the reward for success is high enough, I will continue to persevere and find satisfaction in a simple victory. What I carry away is often more than that victory but knowledge that I can apply elsewhere. It opens up the world a bit more to all the things I don’t know.
I think that underlying everything is the need for experience with success. We need to make sure the goals are within reach, even if on tippy toes, but hopefully less effort than that. We need to look at challenges in a positive way, the way kids look at gaming.
Good point. We should always set reasonable, attainable goals that help us toward the big, seemingly unreachable dreams. But the difference between those who succeed in life and those who fail often is the determination to give it a try just one more time.
Failure also is key to a healthy and vibrant economy. Economic recovery plans that mask the lessons to be learned from this downturn could do more harm than good. I see great potential for people to create and market new products and services that others want, and I believe these innovations (with their embedded failures along the way) are the bright light in our economic future. (Great site, Bill.)
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