Reflection 8

Capture:

This week I'd like to reflect on the fear of failure in learning and in life and the effects it has on our ability to perform.

Analysis:

Failure. Failure is unacceptable in our society. Growing up, what happened if you got a score below a 50 on a test? You got a failing grade. You get enough failing grades and you wouldn't graduate high school. Not only in learning do we 'fail' but socially too. We fail if we say the 'wrong' thing at school. What ends up happening? We don't say anything at all! There is something wrong here. Failure in this context, in society's context of failure as a whole, has an extremely negative connotation. It becomes feared and avoided. Failure boxes us into what we think is acceptable by society, so we produce anything and everything else so long as we don't fail in our society's eyes. Fear of failure eliminates creativity. What is creativity? One form of creativity is doing things that have never been done, thinking in ways that have never been thought, going place that have never been gone. The notion of doing something that hasn't been done before becomes insurmountable with the fear of failure.Thinking like this trains us to think that failure is an unbearable  and therefore you shouldn't try new things because you might fail. Not only that but it leads us to believe that we must do everything perfectly, that there is no room for error, which is completely unrealistic. By trying to avoid failure, we set ourselves up for failure by always falling short of what we see our potential as being.You shouldn't start a business because it might fail, you shouldn't get married because it might fail. The reality is failure is meant to happen. Failure is meant to be learned from and celebrated.

Action:

I will create an environment in my classroom where failure is acceptable (in certain forms) I'll elaborate on this subject more next week.