In Praise of Failure
A long time ago, I had a friend named Bill Nothisrealname. Bill was one of those guys — and there’s always one of those in practically every high school — who was just a genius at really everything he did. A Rubik’s Cube nut, Bill could spin that thing into coherence practically blindfolded and literally one-handed; he was the valedictorian of his class nearly from the first day of freshman year, and so on.
Our English teacher thought he was terribly arrogant (and, even though our English teacher was pretty arrogant himself, he was also right about Bill). One day, Seigleman decided to give Bill a comeuppance: Bill was a bit tardy to class, and Seigleman announced that he’d play a joke on Bill and tell him he’d gotten a C on the most recent exam. We urged him to tell Bill he’d failed, but Seigleman disagreed. “He’ll never believe it,” he said. He was right.
Bill came in tardy and sat down as Seigleman was passing out the papers. “Martinez…A. Melk…D. Nothisrealname…C.”
”No, I didn’t,” said Bill instantly — I mean, instantly. No hesitation, no self-questioning, no wondering if perhaps he’d studied the wrong chapter.
“Yeah,” admitted Seigleman, somewhat disgruntledly. “You got the A.”
“Plus,” Bill amended.
It was no surprise to any of us when Bill got a full-ride scholarship to Major Technical University; in fact, it would’ve been shocking if he had not. National Merit, 5s on his APs, the whole bit. I, on the other hand, with my far more modest GPA, went to Unimpressive State University and matriculated with the other five thousand freshmen who came to get a degree or a tan. I struggled through my freshman year, taking too many No-Doz (note to self: racing heart and feelings of anxiety make No-Doz a No-Go. Possibly try coffee made with Red Bull next time?), realizing that my mad skool skillz really needed some serious buttkicking, and listening to way, WAY too much Pink Floyd.
When I saw Bill again, it was spring break at the time. I asked him how he was doing and how MTU was going.
“I flunked out,” he said.
“Yeah, whatever, but seriously,” I chuckled, “How’s it going?”
“I flunked out.”
“No s&&&!”
He really had. Everyone else at MTU had been a valedictorian too. Everyone else had gotten a 5 on their AP Physics and AP Calculus exams too (or something similar). Everyone else had gotten National Merit.
What everyone else had that Bill hadn’t was the ability to study. “I had no idea,” he said. “I never needed to study. Never. I don’t think I ever read a chapter more than one time in my entire life before this year.”
Oh, s**** you, Bill, I thought, thinking of the foreign language class we’d both been in during high school. He’d gotten departmental honors. I’d gotten a B — a B for which I’d really broken my back. Endless flash cards. Endless rehearsals of dialogues: “Depeche-toi, mon ami Jean! Nous sommes en retard!” Stupid accent aigu.
Then in that moment, I had a stunning thought: If our positions had been reversed, I might have been able to do better at MTU than Bill had.
Not because of any native genius, of course, but because of the opposite reason: I had learned failure.
I had learned fairly early on that I was good at basically only one subject, and every other subject was going to present its own unique (and usually insoluble) challenges. There had never been a moment for me (well, except maybe with English) where learning was truly effortless, where I never had to review the material – or find some way to force it into my pachycephalosaurean skull.
There’s much to be said about homeschooling, but one virtue that seems never to get attention is that homeschooling allows children to learn failure. I’m sure that in the imaginations of some people who don’t homeschool, homeschooled children get As in everything because homeschooling is so easy for them, or Mom is biased, or all they have to learn is that there were no dinosaurs and that the world is only four thousand years old.
Not exactly. Most homeschooling parents try to hit what educational theorists refer to as the “zone of proximal development” — that sweet spot between too easy and too hard where the kid can understand the concept you’re trying to teach when you provide her or him with some examples and temporary necessary scaffolding.
Of course, in the real world of the Melk house, what that means is that we’re constantly shifting around trying to find that sweet spot. Sometimes, the material we cover is too easy, leaving me looking at some useless workbook I paid ten bucks to Learning is Expensive to own. Other times, we’ve tried a concept and it’s just been too hard, even with scaffolding, explanations….hand puppets, you name it.
I was feeling bad about those moments of failure when our child has run smack into something they just can’t do (yet). They cry, which of course feels like a shiv straight to my heart, and we have those conversations about the importance of trying, about Edison’s dictum about one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration, of putting it aside for awhile and coming back to it later.
That’s when I thought of Bill. Our school system did him a terrible disservice by not accelerating him, not just by one grade but by several — and then reassessing that placement after a year or two to see if he needed more: that is, to see if he was hitting the sweet spot between too-easy success and too-costly failure. Or at least that he was swinging periodically in a zone around the sweet spot, sometimes encountering material that was one or the other, but learning a few things along the way: that real learning takes effort, that learning the process of learning is sometimes as important as learning the skill or the concept being taught, that learning sometimes requires humility most of all.
Last I saw Bill, he was going to take a little bit of a break, but then he was going back to the university, this time to Unimpressive State.
I hope he’s doing well.
What an absolutely brilliant synopsis of my high school years… LOL
Bill was essentially Carl, but Carl DID learn failure at the Big U, and turned it around, because he didn’t want to go back to Tiny Awful Town , USA. He had aimed on “getting out” his whole life.
I, on the other hand, knew failure in certain subjects, and I hit it at HS level. I think it was a good thing!
I agree with you about the “sweet spot” in homeschooling. Grace and I have had many discussions about it as well. She THRIVES on higher level concepts for most things, but sometimes the technical skills aren’t there yet, and that’s the really hard part. I think the hardest part is when she thinks she’s failed, because she *only mostly*has the concept completely mastered, but *I* know that kids don’t usually grasp whatever it is until closer to middle school or high school. I wouldn’t have it any other way though. They are all a hoot to raise, no matter what!
Like I said in SHBTS, Grace is a “Good Kid”. Sometimes her empathy and , well, “goodness” get in the way. I can’t believe I am saying that, but it is true. Sometimes she misses out on things because she’s so concerned about the Other Person, and sometimes she’s TOO accommodating during school time. Then again, some kids miss out on learning about empathy young ( and failure…like your post says) and they miss a whole other dimension to life.
Thanks for your Thoughtful Post;)
Forte
Yep, yep, I’m painfully familiar with the whole idea that failure equals “incomplete mastery of material at this current time.” OY. That and, “I didn’t get it perfectly THE FIRST TIME.”
Grace is a wonderful kid.
Oh, I hear you. There was a Bill in my own life who went off to Ivy U., then crashed and burned. I had been double grade skipped, and I still got to grad school and suffered quite a bit before I figured out how to Really Work. (Sometimes I think I learned to well!)
I worry we overcorrect at our house — constant challenge, not enough success to build confidence and motivation — but I know just what you mean about finding that Sweet Spot. We keep working at it all the time.
You are dead on! Sometimes, I worry that I’m pushing too hard to get my son past an academic hurdle (ex. writing a paragraph), but it’s obvious that he feels pride in accomplishing something that seemed so difficult before.
His music teacher tells us that musical talent is often nothing more than the willingness to try & lots of practice. I’m beginning to see that it’s true in any subject.
Great story. I was, and am, Bill. Not the Bill you refer to, but like countless other Big Fish, Small Pond guys who didn’t really have to study much to get great grades. But something happened to me in my senior year of high school: I decided that I’d go to college, after a year of working, to learn. And that I did.
Great post. You really summed it up. What’s hard is for the perfectionists to let up. I got A’s in high school, but I worked my patoosie off for them. Making B’s might have yielded a more relaxed person.
Thank you for that reminder that those moments when the kids actually cry over the work we give them have a value in their own right. We are always trying for that Zone of Proximal Learning too. It’s a constant adjustment!
Shaun, I know what you mean…sometimes I think we just hit that sweet spot like a clock pendulum hits a particular mark on the clock: by passing through it from one extreme to another.
Nice post. We’ve been deep into that sweet spot zone this week. My oldest has had several character building opportunities, especially with his math work. And I’m having a few myself, to be honest. It is a lot harder to push, pull, threaten and cajole someone to a level of excellence than to be content leaving them where they are comfortable.
I am a service academy grad and now do local interviews for the admissions office. What you said about the hard working B student having greater success than the naturally gifted student who never learned to fail and get back up again is a big part of the screening we do.
BTW, I think you’re actually too hard on Mitchner.
Hi, Sebastian. Thank God someone else has to push, pull, threaten, and cajole too…whew! Hey, I like Michener as a fun airport read — he really did teach me everything I know about Hawaiian history — and I wouldn’t object to it as independent reading, but when I think, “Man, there are all sorts of books that, for cultural literacy’s sake alone, they NEED to read,” that’s when Michener falls pretty low on the list, you know?
Cool post — thanks!