Facing Failure

Getting back up and dusting yourself off is a crucial life lesson to learn sooner rather than later.  As a father, I can proudly say that my daughter, at 21 months old, does not cry immediately when she falls down; and believe me; she’s taken some serious diggers.  Why doesn’t she cry, it is because of how my wife and I react, or actually do not react, to her failure.  While one may not regard falling down as a failure, it is the obvious failure state of walking or running.  When she was first learning to walk, she cried out mostly of frustration, but now when she falls she knows that she is not truly hurt, so she does not cry.

Why does any of this matter?  Because failure is inevitable, and how we react to it shapes the course of the life one lives. This is, of course, easier said than done.  In all honesty, I know I could handle my personal failures better.  I often dwell on what I ‘shoulda’ or what I ‘coulda’ instead of learning from the ordeal.  In an article by Beth Arky, Dr. Amanda Mintzer of the Child Mind Institute has many suggestions on acclimating children to failure.  One of the most relevant suggestions, for me especially, is creating teachable moments from failure scenarios.  This ensures that something is learned from the failure, and that is the key, ensuring that conditions that bring about failure are avoided in the future.  The key to establishing these good habits is providing a proper model.

Children are very good at emulating not simply what they see, but also what they perceive.  When a child’s role model is faced with failure a child will learn from their reaction.  More importantly, when a child is faced with adversity, it is important for parents to handle that set back appropriately.  In an NPR article by Tara Haelle, Kyla Haimovitz and Carol Dweck, professors of psychology at Stanford claim that young learners may correlate their intelligence as a static trait if they are ill prepared to handle failure.  This counters the entire idea of education, if everyone’s intelligence was static there would be no advancement, which is a wholly disheartening idea.  Teachers and parents will be on the front line of failure.  Teachers will often be the ones to deliver the bad news to students, but both parties will have to ensure that the student does not get discouraged or jaded.

Teachers need to prepare students for potential failure, but how?  Not in grades, as grades are already a stressor for many students that may be facing immense pressure from parents.  Prior to assessing for a grade though, in class projects and in homework, there should be activities that push the students to their current knowledge limits.  In the realm of mathematics this can be done through encouraging the students to complete proofs of future concepts with the tools they already possess.  Some students may be able to do this, and some will not, as many of these theorems made a name of many great mathematicians.  An exercise like this is almost welcoming failure, just for the student to realize that they are in the same company as other mathematicians of the past who could not develop the theories.

A student who does not face challenging material early on in their education career will be in for a shock later on when they finally face failure.  However, those who are prepared for the occasional stumble will be able to get up, dust themselves off, and not repeat the same mistakes.