Why Fear the Fear of Failure? Imperatives for Refining our Education System

Adjournment motion raised by Nominated Member of Parliament Professor Lim Sun Sun in the Parliament of Singapore on 3 February 2020

Honorable Members of the House, as we approach the end of a long sitting in Parliament, you must be running through your minds the many tasks you need to complete tomorrow, as you tick off those that you have accomplished today. You may cheer in the thought that you have achieved several goals, but nevertheless berate yourself for not attaining others. And you probably feel frustrated and annoyed at your lack of efficacy in that regard.

Because ultimately as human beings, we are often our own toughest critics. We set lofty targets for ourselves, and feel like losers when we do not meet them. We take our own shortcomings and inflate them, diminish our best efforts and magnify our failures.

Alas, failure is very much on the minds of students in Singapore, as revealed by the PISA Rankings announced in December. While our 15-year-old students came in second worldwide in reading, math and science, we came in first for a fresh indicator. The PISA test introduced a new measure to assess students’ fear of failure where compared to students from other countries, we have the highest percentage of students, 78%, agreeing or strongly agreeing with the phrase, "When I am failing, this makes me doubt my plans for the future". Tellingly, 72% of Singapore students also worry about what others would think of them if they fail, reflecting the resounding weight of failure on their sense of self-worth.

While we may despair that these statistics indicate our failure as a society to nurture tougher and more resilient youths, we should also take them as helpful cues for what we can do to further refine our education system, so that we can make it even more robust and forward-looking than it already is. This involves taking a hard look at the achievement orientation that underlies our education system, with its strong focus on examinations and grades that contributes to this fear of failure.

Achievement orientation is by no means undesirable as it propels our students to take their studies seriously, work hard and strive for excellence. However, an over-emphasis on achievement can also extinguish the love for learning, induce an obsession with grades and transform our students into examination-taking machines.

I therefore commend MOE for having made concrete steps towards de-emphasising examinations at Primary and Secondary levels. Mid-year examinations for Primary 3 and 5 and Secondary 1 and 3 students are being progressively scrapped, and all graded assessments and examinations at Primary 1 and 2 have also been removed to give young pupils two test-free years. Report books no longer state the class and level rankings of Primary and Secondary school students, and marks for each subject are rounded off and presented as whole numbers, without decimal points, to minimise the intense focus on marks. Instead, teachers now provide qualitative descriptors on their pupils' learning. While some may denigrate these as mere symbolic efforts, we cannot underestimate the power of symbolism.

Indeed, there is yet more that we can do to lessen the achievement orientation and downplay the fear of failure, both symbolically and practically, particularly at the operational level.

First, let us cast our eye on our students’ everyday learning environments. I am assured that most of our teachers work hard at their jobs and do their best to instill excellence and industry in their students. However, a small minority engage in microaggressions in the classroom where they use questionable tactics and harsh measures to motivate under-performing students. As distressed students and parents have shared with me, these include reading out the names and test scores of every student in class in order of highest to lowest scorers, thereby prolonging the ordeal for those at the bottom of the pile. Another often mentioned practice is the flashing of the work of poor performers on the screen and using these as examples of what not to do, with the identity of the "incompetent" student being made clearly known to everyone.

Teachers have also been known to taunt students with disparaging comments such as "you’re too stupid to take this course" or "why can’t you do something so simple?" In more extreme situations, some teachers promise the entire class a fast food treat if everyone in the class scores above a certain threshold. When some pupils fail to attain that magic score, the teacher then denies everyone the treat and the disappointed class then chastises and ostracizes the under-performers. Such tactics not only shame the poor performers but also create a toxic environment that promotes dog-eat-dog hostility rather than peer-to-peer support.

I believe that these teachers are fundamentally well-intentioned and seek only to spur on their students. And their actions are really symptomatic of the broader pressures that teachers themselves face in delivering results. Be that as it may, such teachers must be made to realise that these destructive methods of highlighting failure and under-performance can demotivate students and lead them to lose interest in the subject. They can also demoralise the students and at worst, inflict long-term damage on their self-esteem. As worries about the mental health of young people are on the ascent, we must not dismiss such microaggressions in the classroom and do our utmost to educate our teachers on their harms. I therefore propose that we better prepare and empower our teachers to be proactive and sensitive in helping students manage failure and deal with setbacks.

Our schools must feel like safe spaces in which to fail, and to try again.

Second, even as we have de-emphasised class rankings in report books, teachers are communicating actively with parents about their children via a range of mobile apps and digital platforms including Parents Gateway, ClassDojo, Remind and even WhatsApp. In research for my book Transcendent Parenting: Raising Children in the Digital Age, we captured screenshots from parents’ phones where teachers would message parents of their children’s performance in individual tests and assignments. Some would also include the highest, lowest and median scores for the assignments, thereby allowing pupils to place where they stood relative to everyone else. Yet another teacher messaged the parents that 30 pupils had scored full marks for a spelling test. If our average class size is 33-34, how would the three or four kids who missed out on a perfect score feel? I reckon that those kids and their parents must have felt like failures.

Furthermore, apps like ClassDojo also allow teachers to assign a score to children’s in-class performance and this is also communicated to the parents, thereby allowing parents to "track" how their children are faring in class. My research also showed that some parents obsess over these scores and interrogate their children about what went on in school, even though these scores are disguised as gamified rewards.

Some may argue that it is parents and indeed students themselves who are keen to know how well they are doing. However, we can collectively reshape the culture of achievement orientation if there is an overall shift in emphasis from relative performance towards individual performance, and where qualitative feedback is prioritized over quantitative metrics. Fundamentally, if we want to reduce the excessive focus on grades in our education system, we must ensure that this is practised consistently and across the board, not just in report books but also in everyday teacher-parent communication.

Third, another setting in which our students feel the fear of failure most acutely is in the collection of PSLE, "O" and "A" level results. Many students and families are on tenterhooks in the days leading up to these fateful moments. Those who have performed beyond or up to expectations will be relieved but those who have not will find the entire exercise excruciating. Besides the seemingly interminable wait for the results, there is also the awkward trudge out of school where friends will demand to know how well you have performed. Some students have been known to call the walk out from the school hall to the school gate the walk of shame. Others hide in the toilet until the coast is clear!

Mind you, many students will feel like they have failed, even if they have done well by objective measures. In one JC where students with 6As and above were invited on stage, some students with 5As cried buckets. In another school where the average IB score was 43, one student who scored an admirable 41 points was seen bawling his eyes out.

Ultimately, the atmosphere around the releasing of results for these high stakes examinations is stressful and intense. Must we pile on the pressure by requiring that students collect them personally? An already difficult experience exacerbated by the prevalence of smartphones to capture and broadcast everything via social media? Let us not forget that our young lead very public lives where they have an online image to maintain and live up to, thereby adding to their social anxiety around such watershed events. I reiterate that the PISA measure found that a sizable majority of our students worry about what others would think of them if they fail.

By removing the public spectacle with which these exam results are released, we can lessen the perception that these exams are as high stakes as currently viewed. We will also send the clear message that they are not the be all and end all of each student’s educational journey.

As it stands, our Universities and Polytechnics already successfully release their exam results online. I am confident that with our Smart Nation infrastructure that we can well handle the online release of PSLE, "O", "A" level and IB results that allow students and their families to receive and process the information in the privacy of their own homes. For students who wish to seek support after the results, schools can be open for the day to welcome whoever wishes to consult, commiserate or even celebrate with teachers. But give all students the option of receiving their results privately.

As for students who have excelled, we can still mark their successes in other ways, such as through the Edusave Award ceremonies that showcase achievements by students across all levels. By turning off the glaring spotlight on the collection of results for high stakes examinations, we also send the important signal that ours is a culture of lifelong learning that does not end with attaining these certificates. After all, in the wake of Industry 4.0 and beyond, we must all recognise that learning extends well beyond our formal school years.

I believe that through these measures big and small, that we can help to further reduce achievement orientation in our education system and in the process, mitigate the fear of failure. As they say, there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

When we fear failure, we tend to be more conservative, stick to the tried and tested, and hesitate to venture into new territory.

The fear of failure can therefore impede personal growth, creativity and innovation, all of which are critical assets for our young people as they mature in a future that is promising, but also challenging.

As the on-going flu crisis sharply demonstrates, ours is a decidedly unpredictable world where curve balls abound. If our young people are crippled by the fear of failure, and do not nurture a growth mindset that is open to constant adaptation, they will find it difficult to manage change and uncertainty.

Our young Singaporeans are smart, capable and passionate. Let us do our best to make sure that they are fearless too.