Grammar Gazette- Issue 1, 2012

Illustration: Leonardo da Vinci’s sketch of a flying machine—four centuries before the engineering design of the aeroplane was finally mastered.

Towards a culture of failure

Mr Stephen Woods, Director of English

There is a strong message in our society about how to boost children’s self esteem, and a main part of that message is: protect them from failure! While this may help with the immediate problem of a child’s disappointment, it can be harmful in the long run. Carol Dweck (2006)

As paradoxical as it may seem, for the School to become a leader in exceptional scholarship, it has to create a culture of failure. This may seem to be a contradiction in terms, but this perception is a result of the widespread notion that failure is the opposite of success. Simplistic dichotomies like this have obscured the fact that success is,

to it, and how our thinking must shift to embrace rather than avoid error. Tim Harford’s 2011 Adapt is subtitled Why success always begins with failure . Since 2006, Parisian teachers have organised an annual Fête des Erreurs, at which science students are given problems they cannot solve and ingredients without directions (The Benefit of Getting Things Wrong, 2010). The highly-regarded Wimbledon Girls High School in London made the news in the UK recently by holding a failure week, at which girls were encouraged to ‘learn how to fail well’ (Burns, 2012). As a self-styled ‘wrongologist’, Kathryn Schulz examines why we experience error as profoundly disturbing. She argues that our reaction derives from the fact that when we are wrong, we are wrong twice: first, we are wrong about the issue at hand, and secondly our idea of ourselves as people who get things right is challenged. It is in this sense that ‘errors—even trifling ones—have the potential to disrupt our sense of self ... our errors represent a moment of alienation from ourselves’ (2010, p.281). Schulz recognises, however, that the trauma of being wrong is temporary, and that we can learn how to be better at being wrong. This learning takes time, as ‘acknowledging our mistakes is an intellectual and (especially) an emotional skill,

in reality, a function or result of failure. If we accept this premise, the obvious corollary is that the better our students get at failing, the more likely it is that their successes will be spectacular. This positive attitude to failure has gained currency in recent times. The 2010 book by Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong, explores the nature of wrongness, our attitudes

17 Grammar Gazette Autumn 2012