It is
only failure that reminds us the exact and central point from where we sow the
seeds of wrong. That is why it is the best defined friends of human being.
In most of the places in Bangladesh,
the misconception about failure is noticeable and everyone takes it as bad
omen. Not in the sense that everyone is failing, but more in the way that
failure is seen as the thing that must not happen at any cost. We are
surrounded by children who get a trophy just for showing up, while we have
others who will never get a trophy even though they work hard every day.
Unfortunately, in an effort to make sure no child is left behind, adults are
trying to make sure that children do not have to experience failure, which is
an unrealistic goal.
When we think of failing our minds
quickly go to testing or being retained in a specific grade. Failure happens in
so many different areas of life and is not contained to high stakes testing. It
can happen on an assignment, at recess and is a part of our daily lives.
Unfortunately, too many people do not want to focus on failure because it is often
equated to weakness, which cannot be any further from the truth.
Why is failure considered so bad?
Besides the obvious reasoning that failing doesn't feel good; failure can offer
many learning lessons to the person failing. No one wants to fail. Few people
wake up in the morning and say, "I hope I fail." However, if failure
was not an option for people, it wouldn't exist, and we all know that failure
is something everyone will have to deal with in their lives.
For full disclosure, I have failed
many times. I have failed as a friend, and as a teacher. As a young student I
was retained in elementary school and spent a great deal of my formative years
failing a variety of subjects. I have seen failure many times and learned a
great deal. First and foremost, I never wanted to fail again.
When I began sending CV to various organizations
for getting job, I was equipped to receive rejection letters or phones. It
didn't matter if I received a few hundered no’s, just as long as I received one
yes. Students need to understand the same. Rejection, when looked at
positively, can help us work harder in an effort to succeed. The reality is
that when we do not prepare students for failure we are doing our students a
disservice. They must learn resiliency and how to move forward in the face of
failure.
What we get from Failing
When looked at correctly, failure can teach us where we went wrong in the first
place, and how we can learn to pick ourselves up again in a pursuit to succeed.
There are valuable lessons in failing. Too often people keep trying the same
solution and keep getting the same result. Failure can teach us that it is not
that we are bad at something, just that we have to try a different method to
find success.
Many students enter college not
understanding what it means to fail. They have spent years in their formative
schooling where they had an adult who catered to their every need. If they
began to fail there was an adult, whether a parent or teacher, ready to
intervene in an effort to help get them back on the right track. This is after
all, the job of the adults around them when they are in school. However, they
enter college and lack the number of adults around to keep them on track and
find the freedom equated with college to be intoxicating. Very often they
cannot maintain the important social and academic balance and end up dropping
classes or dropping out of school.
Some students learn from this
experience and enter the college setting again with a new set of expectations.
Very often they seek help when they need it and find a better balance between
their social functions and academic obligations. Other times there are students
who cannot handle failing and end up never trying again because they have a
fear that they will not succeed. Sadly, they never take it one more step to
figure out where and when they went wrong.
In fine we can say, failure comes in many forms. It happens when students or
educators try something new and it doesn't work out the way they thought. These
situations are a perfect time to learn how to deal with failure, or even
better, teach students how to work through it. Failure can offer great learning
lessons for us all if we choose to approach it with a positive attitude.
As adults, we should share our
stories of struggling and failure with our students so they understand that it
is a part of life. The resiliency students can gain and the lessons they can
learn from failing will help them find success in the future.
