Grammar Gazette- Issue 1, 2012

and as such it evolves in tandem with our cognitive and psychological development’ (2010, p.197). While coping with being wrong is a skill that can be developed, Schulz acknowledges that most of us tend to respond defensively rather than constructively to our failures. Tim Harford classifies these defensive manoeuvres into three categories that are familiar to teachers, parents, and to anyone capable of honest reflection on their own failures: While denial is the process of refusing to acknowledge a mistake, and loss-chasing is the process of causing more damage while trying to hastily erase the mistake, hedonic editing is a subtler process of convincing ourselves that the mistake does not matter (2011, p.254). At school, these three responses take predictable forms. Denial takes the form of claims that the teacher just does not understand that the student’s work is successful, or that some subjectivity on the teacher’s part has prevented them from either perceiving or acknowledging the rightness of the student’s response (‘the teacher doesn’t like me’). Loss- chasing takes the apparently-laudable form of a student responding to a lower-than-desired grade by redoubling their effort. More effort may, of course, be required, but if that effort is wasted in applying the same strategies that produced the low grade or difficulty in the first place, only growing frustration will result. Hedonic editing is a form of rationalisation that makes us feel better by diminishing the importance of the setback, usually along the lines of ‘when am I ever going to use—insert subject here—anyway?’ Harford presents the Palchinsky Principles (named after an ill-fated early Soviet era Russian engineer, Peter Palchinsky) as a constructive alternative to these well-worn, destructive responses. These three tenets are a manifesto for the acceptance, embrace, and exploitation of failure: 1. Variation: seek out new ideas and try new things; 2. Survivability: try new things on a scale that is survivable; 3. Selection: seek out feedback and learn from your mistakes as you go along (2011, p.25). By adhering to these principles, students can come to accept and even to seek out failure, safe in the knowledge that it is the essential pathway to eventual success. Variation may seem an obvious response to failure, as the many aphorisms about learning from mistakes and history remind us to change our ways or risk eternal disappointment. But trying new things runs counter to the folk wisdom of the fugitive Robert the Bruce and his resilient spider, and to the innate conservatism shared by many of us. The idea that ‘try, try, try(ing) again’ may actually be futile and destructive can be particularly challenging for students who have been praised for

persistence for its own sake. Variation is daunting as it involves risk, both in the jettisoning of old ways, and in the likelihood of failure as new ways are found to be successful or not. It is crucial that students—and those who support them—understand that variation may not produce success immediately, and that unsuccessful strategies may ultimately prove valuable and instructive. Harford explains survivability by referring to out-of- town tryouts for Broadway shows and to the sheltered ‘skunk works’ set up by large corporations to develop new technologies isolated from the pressures of commercial success or failure. The recent error-fests in Paris and London schools are essentially temporary educational skunk-works. In our English classes at Brisbane Girls Grammar School, we take the long view, and try to create an atmosphere where error can be explored and exploited for five years. The course outlines given to Year 10 and Year 11 English students exhort the girls explicitly to see these years as zones where they can trial new words, sentences, structures, ways of speaking to groups, and even ways of interacting with their teachers, free of the threat of any repercussions for their tertiary or other aspirations. For this approach to yield results, however, the girls and those who read their report cards need also to take a longer-term view. Assessment and reporting are not the same as learning, and are sometimes inimical to it, particularly if short-term perfectionism on the part of the student or their parents results in a term or semester grade being valued more highly than the deep learning that variation and risk-taking foster. Feedback is the third and final of Palchinsky’s keys to exploiting failure. Grades are the post-mortems of assessment, while feedback is the diagnosis, prescription, and prognosis. Girls who focus solely on the grade of a task—whether the grade is a good one—benefit little compared to their peers who focus on the teacher’s criticism, encouragement, and suggestions for improvement. In her influential Mindset , Carol Dweck argues that: Children need honest and constructive feedback. If they are ‘protected’ from it, they won’t learn well. They will see coaching and feedback as negative and undermining. Withholding constructive criticism does not help children’s confidence; it harms their future ... Constructive criticism is feedback that helps us to fix something. It is feed-forward (2006, p.182). Dweck’s argument is validated—and the parents and teachers of high school students encouraged—by a recent neuroscientific MRI study that identifies age 12 as the point at which brains begin to respond more powerfully to constructive feedback on errors than to positive feedback (‘Learning from mistakes only works after age 12, study suggests’, 2008).

Towards a culture of failure continued on next page

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