Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho!
You must learn to fail intelligently. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails forward towards success.
Thomas Edison
Show me a teacher who doesn’t fail every day and I’ll show you a teacher with low expectations for his or her students.
Dylan Wiliam
I’ve written a fair bit over the past couple of years on the need to allow pupils (and teachers) to fail, learn from their mistakes and do better. This ability to learn from mistakes is, along with the ability to delay gratification, the master skill. Most things are possible if we’re prepared to work hard, and aren’t deterred by the pitfalls we’ll inevitably encounter along the way.
Then today had an insight. I’m almost embarrassed to call it an insight as I’m sure it’s fairly trite and must be something which has always been blindingly obvious to everyone else. It came to me whilst reading a sci-fi novel called The Martian by Andy Weir. The story is a modern retelling of Robinson Crusoe with the protagonist an astronaut left stranded on Mars after an unfortunate series of misadventures. Anyway, at one stage he’s trying to work out how to do something very technical and extremely dangerous and says of his first abortive attempt, “I guess you could call it a failure, but I prefer the term ‘learning experience’.” And something clicked.
What occurred to me was this: failure is just a lack of practice. The astronaut in the story eventually succeeds because he perseveres; I have a B grade in GCSE in Maths because I worked really, really hard to get it; some pupils succeed at school because they learn from their mistakes. All this reminds me of John Hattie’s exhortation on feedback: “A teacher’s job is not to make work easy. It is to make it difficult. If you are not challenged, you do not make mistakes. If you do not make mistakes, feedback is useless.” And while that is certainly true, there’s an even bigger consequence: if you don’t make mistakes, you’re not going to get better.
The unofficial motto of Eton College is ‘effortlessly superior’. Can there be any two words more pernicious words to conjoin? The message is that it’s only worth to succeeding as long as you don’t look like you’re trying. I think we have seen the effects of this in public life. Obviously, some pupils succeed at school despite coasting and never risking failure. Bully for them. But what, I wonder, do they learn from this experience? And what will they do when (and if) they encounter something which makes them struggle? Effortless success isn’t really success at all. . Just because you can do something easily doesn’t mean you should be proud of the fact. I love this line from Taylor Mali’s What Teachers Make: “I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor and an A- feel like a slap in the face.” In fact, it’s worth watching the whole thing:
So, that’s it really. I think we need the experience of having had to struggle in order to know how to cope with failure. Failure can often be just a lack of practice. And with enough practice, all should be well. The only real failure anyone ever suffered was giving up.
Related posts
The art of failing
Why we should strive for perfection
Building Resilience: Sir, I’m stuck
In Reggio Emilia, the educators refer to their many inquiries into learning as “provocations.”
Provoking problem making, provoking dissonance, provoking challenges, well, you get the idea. They ask the students, “I don’t know what you mean? Can you explain it?” Then they say, “I’m not sure I understand, is there another way for you to show me what it is your saying-thinking, have an idea about?”
In my Kindergarten class, we use the term edit a lot. Can you look at this and think about it again and edit your response? This is not the right answer, can we look at it, tell me how you found this answer and then we’ll edit it. I have found that when you use the term “edit,” then you are giving feedback that is real, not a “good job, bad job ” kind of judgement. You can say this to students who did a quick and lousy job, and have them reconsider their “easy” answer, and let them know it’s not enough, not sufficient, not acceptable, and they almost always know that. So many times when a child has drawn a quick stick figure as a response for a required drawing, when i hand it back and discuss why I want them to add details, and “edit it,” I get these really sophisicated drawings back, as their reconsidered work. Just because they were able to save face and edit their work, instead of a tongue lashing about handing in their worse work.
And of course, editing is incrediblely inportant for those whose need input, feedback and who struggle with ideas and concepts.
Thanks for these posts- they make me think and consider my own beliefs and experiences.
[…] Read more on The Learning Spy… […]
I agree with the main thrust of this; challenging work and perseverance in the face of it is a powerful way of making significant progress. However, the twitter response to this post dwells on “Failure is just a lack of practice. And with enough practice, all should be well.” I know this is the problem with twitter (140 characters), but if this is the actual message taken away from this blog, then it is too non-nuanced (if that is the word). Lack of significant progress is not only the result of a lack of practice…..
It isn’t? Obviously, I’m a big believer in the Matthew Effect and in our efforts to make teaching more explicit in an attempt to compensate but I also stand by the idea that if we (or they) practice sufficiently we’ll make progress. Have a look at this blog on the ‘practice gap’: http://blog.mrthomasmaths.com/2013/08/the-practice-gap.html
Making progress is not the same as not failing. Failure depends on the goal not just the process unless you qualify it to say “failure to make progress”. I agree failure is the key to growth but it is easy to carry on in that mindset if you perceive a) you are likely to be successful in the end and the effort is worth it and b) If you are getting success and rewards in other facets of your life. In reality the combinations of these different variables in individuals makes it a whole lot more complicated than simply more or less practice.
[…] this blog post about pushing students, at a quick glance one might think that teachers are supposed to make students fail. Thinking […]
[…] like what David Didau has to say in his blog “The Learning Spy,” and this article about failure has really got me thinking about how we need to be as teachers. In high school, I was never […]
[…] a blog post by David Didau, he talks about a book that he was reading about an astronaut stuck on Mars and how […]
[…] post is extremely inspirational! It is relatable to everyone and it was encouraging to me. Everyone […]
[…] https://www.learningspy.co.uk/featured/failure-youve-given/ […]
[…] Failure is Just a Lack of Practice […]
[…] arts in the world. One fails forward towards success.” Before reading the blog, “Failure is just a Lack of Practice” I never truly considered failing to be a success, or even a positive learning experience. […]
[…] particular post touches on the some of the most important skills you could ever have, the ability to learn from […]
[…] “Failure is Just a Lack of Practice,” David Didau read a book and had an “ah-ha” […]
[…] Didau starts off a blog titled, “Failure Is Just A Lack of Practice” on his website, “The Learning Spy” with an insightful quote from Dylan […]
While I understand what you are saying here, and in many contexts I agree with you, I, sadly, also understand that sometimes we fail and it wasn’t down to anything we did, or didn’t do. Those are the failures with which it is difficult to deal – are there any in an educational context? Maybe, I don’t know.
I am in agreement with Chemistry poet on this.
I found this a very moving post, btw. Thanks. 🙂