Failing to learn

One of the problems with the current educational paradigm is that we have come to stigmatized failure. However, failure is extremely important to the learning process. When students challenge themselves, they will inevitably have to fail at some point. As Sir Ken Robinson said, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original." Unfortunately, this is not what is being taught in the current environment of high stakes standardized testing. We are teaching our students that being wrong is the worst thing you can possibly do.

When we were babies, we failed all the time. Watch a baby learning how to walk: fall after fall, the baby remains undaunted and keeps on trying. Failure is a natural part of learning. By penalizing and making failure the worst thing you can do, we have created a generation of students who no longer push themselves. Instead, they coast within their comfort zone as much as possible to minimize any chances of failure. Any original thought and creative capacity are stifled with such a mindset. Failure, more so than success, creates fertile grounds for learning that is both powerful and enriching.

So how do we move beyond the current paradigm? First, we need to do away with high stakes testing and instead, emphasis failures as opportunities for learning. Instead so saying "Aha! Gotcha!" when a student fails, we say, "Well, what can we learn from this?" and let them try again. We encourage students to engage in mastery of the subject by learning from their failures.

Here's a great video by Derek Sivers about why everyone should and needs to fail.