TLDR: We need to make it safe for kids to fail, to define failure properly and put it in its proper perspective. Repeated failure produces resilience, and resilience is key to health and success. We need to change our dialogue so that our kids become resilient, learning to embrace failure on their way to success.
Our son’s boarding school takes the fear-of-failure issue very seriously and has been studying its causes and effects for several years. A committee was set up to consider ways in which the school could purposefully stretch students to take the risks that would help them develop the grit and resilience necessary to put failure into its proper perspective so they could move beyond its debilitating limits. What started this investigation was what a separate endeavor had reported back to the school in its mission to find out what 21st century companies are looking for in young employees. The committee spent time at Apple and other leading-edge companies and found that academic success was not high on the list of what made for a compelling employee, instead resilience—the ability to see failure as a necessary part of finding solutions and to forge ahead confidently after each setback—was key. The companies certainly were looking for bright employees, but they require those employees to be able to embrace failure regularly as a spur to success. They’ve seen too many paper ponies contribute too little lasting value. The committee found that these companies were struggling as hard to find a reliable way to recognize this trait in applicants as much as our son’s school was finding a way to instill it.
The school already understood the grade grind and college rat race as it’s been in that business a long time. All its incoming students test high on the SSAT entrance exam and have top grades; it’s a cherry-picked student body on the incoming end and a very polished group on the graduating end. By definition, though, all of these high-achieving students will find themselves in the lower tiers of the class at some time during their years at the school, guaranteed. That first grade report is generally a shock to all as there is no grade inflation (it’s straight-scale, no makeups or curves or test corrections, etc.), and 50% of those “perfect” kids find themselves in the bottom half of the class right out of the gate. It’s a paradigm shift for many, including the parents, but understanding where the bar is set and learning that you will not always clear it is the first step on the path to resilience. That lesson is just embedded in the way these schools are set up. Dealing healthfully with that lesson is the tricky part.
What the school has tried to do is shift the conversation about the definition of failure. They talk about it with students a lot. They ask them what they would attempt if they knew they could not fail, and they set up opportunities for students to try those things and take shots at subject and activities, often sports, where the student has no prior experience. They believe that high school should be a safe time to experience trial and error, to examine what falling short means, and to discuss and take to heart the valuable lessons learned when performance lacks and where just getting up one more time may take them. The funny thing is that the students respond eagerly to these challenges and find relief in the discussions, but it’s often the parents who worry that such experiments are too costly in the current grade and college race. I’m guessing the school has a bigger challenge there.
This school does not have it all figured out, but it is changing its culture and its dialogue about success and failure and what it means to be truly educated and what the life stakes really are. It is making a serious institutional effort to enable students to take risks, fall short, dust themselves off, and look forward to the next attempt. I have been listening to their progress through parent meetings during our time there then e-mails and articles in the school bulletin and newspaper later. Most importantly, I’ve seen what this culture produced in our son from timid, risk-averse ninth-grader to confident, self-aware senior. I marveled that he took low grades (even a D, folks) in stride and counted how many more tests and assessments he had in that class to prove himself—not get an A, but prove himself–to himself. He also came to the school unfit with no sports experience at all. The school’s message made it safe for him to try something as relentless as crew, struggle mightily at the bottom of the heap, but with encouragement and perspective make it to the top of the varsity roster by senior year. He “failed” in the classroom and on the water over and over and over but, each time, the dialogue focused on what he wanted to achieve and how each failure meant one step closer to getting there or, at least, getting to his personal best. Failure isn’t about ability; it’s about giving up. Success is getting up and trying again. That was the relentless message.
As to the concern that encouraging these risks can be too costly in the current college race, the school also does a very good job at helping students (and parents) understand that a great high school education, not any particular college result, is what they are all about; when the high school education is stellar and the student is resilient, college will take care of itself. When students and parents understand that there are scores and scores of fine colleges and every one of their students will end up at one of them, students can relax and take those risks that instill resilience and arm them best for success, however they define it.