Thursday, March 11, 2010

Failure... a step toward success!



Today is our school’s 2nd Annual Invention Convention & Science Fair.  Apparently, we only get to call it “annual” in its second year…so today we have reached this great milestone!

Seriously though, I have been astounded over the years (and this is not being overly melodramatic) at the incredibly inflated expectations of today’s parents toward their children’s potential.  Obviously, being the head of a Jewish day school, I only have geniuses who were reading in their cribs, doing calculus in preschool, and who are today solving the world’s greatest mysteries and challenges as pre-pubescent Einsteins.

The fact is that even with tongue-in-cheek humor I have witnessed great attempts by education policymakers to suck the creativity and innovation right out of our children while creating expectations for achieving a mythical “perfection” through high-stakes assessments.  I’m not exactly sure when “striving for perfection” became “being perfect” but I am very confident that this expectation is a strong reason innovation (read: risk-taking) has slowly disappeared from our children’s behaviors for fear of potential failure
                                                                                                                                                         
Woody Allen said it best “If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.”  (And he knows something or two about failing).  As a head of school I am always trying to help put things into perspective, whether it’s for our students, staff and faculty, or parents and broader community, nothing does the job better than talking about a child learning to walk:

The build-up to those first few steps, the encouragement, support and even outright cheering when a toddler stands up is at times overwhelming.  Then a stride across the room comes and the audience erupts!  From there a few setbacks (thank G-d for well-padded diapers) but the encouragement continues; the support network stands firm (pun intended).  And eventually, after who knows how many attempts, failure turns into success!!!

So when does it change?  I dare say that in the world of Jewish education we must ensure that it never does.  In our school, the commitment to the Invention Convention over the last two years has been fraught with parental push-back.  “It’s too hard for my child to come up with something original” is the most common criticism.  “My child can’t come up with any ‘problems’ or ‘challenges’ to be solved” is another frequently used critique.  Nonetheless, when I have the opportunity to walk around our museum of innovative products and creations, as I did this morning, there is no doubt that we are well on our way to readdressing this critical commodity.

When I was a child, my mother (a former religious school teacher) used to say that the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament was that the Torah had characters who were imperfect and “real” human beings.  They might have had Divine relationships that we only wish we could have today, but our ancestors were real, they made mistakes, and they certainly failed in a varied multitude of ways. 

Today, I ask you all out there, what are we doing to emulate this critical characteristic of our ancestors?  Where has all the imperfection gone?  And where is our support and recognition that failing is not a badge of dishonor, rather it is a symbol of one’s pursuit for success?

9 comments:

  1. How much of the drop in creativity stems from our over-extending our children in after-school activities; sports, music, playdates and more? Many of our children don't have time to just play which is where so much of their creativity shines. When they learn to entertain themselves and have downtime, we allow them to innovate.

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  2. I was at a conference where someone in the room (who runs a Jewish innovation incubator agency) said, "if everything we fund succeeds then we are not taking big enough of a risk on behalf of the Jewish people." I thought it was brilliant!

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  3. It's natural to want to protect our children from pain, hurt, and failure. As a parent I completely understand that - I hate seeing my children struggle! Yet, we have to remember that those challenges are what let them grow. As much as I know that it is essential, I can empathize with parents who want to protect their children. The challenge is to push ourselves, as the adults, as the educators, (and as parents) to go past our own comfort zones and let our kids push their own!!

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  4. I think this still is looking at creating opportunities for failure from a parental/teacher point of view. Everyone fails. There's nothing we can do to prevent that. The issue is that when children fail do we try to lie and hide that fact from them or do we try to explain failure and what they learn from it. Helping someone become comfortable with failure and learning how to grow from it may help create a person who is more comfortable trying things where she/he can fail.

    Whether the opportunities for failure are a competitive game, social interactions, or a science fair, to me, the issue seems to be more how people react when failure occurs more than trying to find ways to make children fail.

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  5. Obviously, being the head of a Jewish day school, I only have geniuses...

    On a related note, while I assume you didn't mean it that way and this is a common joking phrase, I've had two friends in different cities whose kids were rejected from kindergarten at supposedly welcoming Jewish day schools. To my understanding, they might not have had below average social development, but well within the range of normal. If schools don't accept students that might challenge teachers and classmates, is it any wonder that a fear of failure is inherent in the system?

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  6. Obviously, being the head of a Jewish day school, I only have geniuses...

    On a related note, while I assume you didn't mean it that way and this is a common joking phrase, I've had two friends in different cities whose kids were rejected from kindergarten at supposedly welcoming Jewish day schools. To my understanding, they might not have had below average social development, but well within the range of normal. If schools don't accept students that might challenge teachers and classmates, is it any wonder that a fear of failure is inherent in the system?

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  7. Dan - although the phrase was not serious from a formal assessment/IQ perspective, I do believe that culturally Jewish parents tend to perceive their children as "geniuses" in some fashion or another. The idea that a child has the potential and the capacity to do anything is a quality and characteristic that has raised many a Jewish child to excellence in the vast plethora of potential professions that exist (and in some cases that don't even exist yet).

    As I keep telling my students, there's a reason that Jews are still around after many wealthier, stronger, and much larger dynasties, sovereignties, and empires are no longer around...culturally we believe there is no limit to our potential. To me, that is the definition of "genius".

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  8. nammie,
    I'm not sure if I follow what you are saying. Jews are all geniuses because we don't tell our children something isn't possible? Besides demoting the meaning of the word "genius," this seems the opposite of my failure comment in many ways. Refusing to say something isn't possible is refusing to recognize when failure occurs and prevents learning from failure.
    I'm all for pushing people as much as possible and letting them learn their limits through experience, but I don't think this view of "people succeed because no one told them there are limits" has much basis in reality.

    The additional logic that this trait is unique to Jews is commonly stated, but also no based on much reality. I believe it's a Lutheran to became famous for talking about his town "where all of the children are above average."

    On a slightly more pointed question, does your school reject students based on their intellectual abilities or special needs requirements? To me, that seems like the ultimate example of refusing to let children find out for themselves what is possible.

    Chag Sameach

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  9. Dan - as I see it there are two definitions to the word "genius"; the qualitative and the quantitative. The quantitative has been difficult to define but is most readily accepted as the top tenth of 1% of the population. The qualitative is even more diverse, and is even more subjective. It is basically defined as "a state of intellectual or creative giftedness".

    Being of the school of constructivist (as opposed to behaviorist) theory I absolutely believe that everyone has the capacity for genius. Whether one achieves his/her potential is very much up to other factors that sometimes get in the way.

    In terms of Jewish culture, I originally used the phrase with tongue-in-cheek; suggesting that a child of Jewish parents is first perceived to be of genius ability and only later in life (if ever) is seen as anything less than that. At least this is my experience after 20+ years in the field of Jewish education.

    However, to answer your question of has my school ever "rejected students based on their intellectual abilities or special needs" the answer is it probably depends on who you are asking. If you ask the parents of a child who is not admitted then they would absolutely see it as a "rejection". If you ask the school why, I believe the school would say because it wants to set up a child for success, and if we don't think a child is developmentally ready, or we can't provide the special resources, or one of the other numerous reasons (all of which have nothing to do with intellectual capacity) we need to unfortunately turn the child away.

    The following article (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/education/01blueschool.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y) is useful in highlighting the fact that if the Jewish day school world was a "free" resource, or at least one paid for by the entire Jewish community as opposed to by a single student's family (i.e. like taxes in the public school world) then we could approach it from the perspective of providing a "free" education and not, very unfortunately, from the perspective that a school needs to function like a business in order to meet a community's needs and not just an individuals...and you should know that it pains me to have to say this from an educational perspective!

    P.s. I specifically chose this article because it is not specifically about a Jewish day school; rather, it is about a school that embarked on opening its doors for only the "right" reasons and has since come to the reality of the times and world we live in...

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