Learning to Fail and Learning from Failure

This piece is a worthy read: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-teach-our-children-fail-jeff-selingo?trk=hp-feed-article-title-publish

It provides, from different sources, strategies for dealing with student failures.  The point is that criticism and improvement are part of learning.  And, without failures, there will not be success.  If you shield children from all risk, they will develop with too soft a shell (the Harvard student referenced in the piece who did not want any negative comments from professors).  Note that the Selingo piece has much greater application to high or medium SES students -- see last paragraph here.  Would that many students had parents hanging over their shoulders helping them with their homework; some students have parents who are absent or couldn't care less or worse.

But, how we communicate that students' work needs improvement is a big issue and has many small pieces embedded in it.  Let's start with the image used by Jeff Selingo -- the big red F.  Some of you may have seen my recent pieces and debates about use of red to correct.  I was never saying: don't correct. I was saying correct papers (or edit online work) in a way that shows respect and trust and enables a student to be open to, not closed off from, the proffered criticism.  I was resoundingly criticized for a trivial idea while others focused on the "big" issues in education.  I have been unable to convince readers that "red" is symbolic of feelings/thoughts we do not want to generate; color messages.

How we communicate failure and the need for improvement IS a big issue and here are a couple of suggestions for how to do this across the educational pipeline (and yes, I know this is placing my head on the proverbial chopping block but we need to showcase the value of small steps and ideas that are often invisible to many -- subtle cues, body language, word usage, color of ink, tone of remarks.

A.  Try correcting papers in a color other than red and have way fewer changes than existing student writing. The point is not to rewrite for students; the point is to showcase a set of comments that will enable the student to re-write.

B.  Don't leave a grade at the top (whether online or in ink) that is without an explanation.  Perhaps the paper is an F and missed the whole point. But, there is a paper and someone tried something.  So, explain the F -- don't just have it sit there like a festering wound.  I used to write long explanations in a memo for students on what I was seeking in an exam.  But, the problem was that the students who needed the help the most actually could not see the difference between what they did and an A paper.  So much for that approach.  They needed someone to explain the differences to them and show them -- orally first, in words delivered with a tone that this is doable prospectively.

3.  A recent article in the New York Times observed that Clarence Thomas has not asked a question for a decade at Supreme Court arguments.  At one point, it referenced Justice Thomas' not asking questions in school -- because he was intimidated by other students.  Ponder that for a moment. That experience, among others including payback, signals why this Justice refuses to ask.  He is reluctant to fail.  How sad and unfortunate is that?  Even at his exalted level, somewhere inside, it seems he is unwilling to take a risk.  And, in so doing, he is failing to role model for students. The whole point of questions during oral argument of Supreme Court cases is to probe and explore.  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/us/politics/clarence-thomas-supreme-court.html?_r=0

4.  I think we need to correct students every time they start to speak by saying something like: "This may be a stupid question but...."  It is common among girls and young women.  We need to project out loudly and clearly: there are no bad questions. (Of course there are some but that is a different question and many of those occur outside the classroom setting.)  We want students to take the risk of asking a question that shows that they do not really understand the issues.  Or, perhaps they understand them very very well and are probing deeper.

So, I agree that failure is necessary.  What we need to explore is how to make failure acceptable.  

And, for the record, we have many students who have done nothing but fail and they are not learning from that experience. They do not have parents guiding their every word.  So, frankly this piece is more applicable for medium to high SES students.  Learning to fail and needing to be corrected is vastly too commonplace for low income kids.  What we need to do to help them is something different -- and opposite: we need to help them believe in themselves.  That's no easy task.  These kids know failure; they don't know success.

Ah, the complexities of education.