Natural - born failers

We fail.

We just can’t help it.

We are natural-born failers.

Problem

There will be some science behind this and plenty of research, but personal experience tells us everything we need to know: we live with failure; it’s baked in.

But if it is so innate; if it’s such a fundamental part of our ability to learn, evolve and, ultimately, to survive, then why do we spend so much time in schools bemoaning our kids’ reluctance to fail, and as a result, spend so much time talking about it?

What is going wrong?

Provocation

I think it’s to do with language and desire.

When we are learning something new - and I am talking now about learning in a formal setting - we have too much of the former (language) and not enough of the latter (desire), making failure an overexposed and ultimately negative noun rather than a powerful, transformational verb.

We know that we do much of our most important learning before we even get to school, in that steep arc of development from 0 - 4. We learn to walk and talk; we learn self-care; we learn how to eat and much more beside this. These are huge developments and they get us up and running, quite literally, as humans. While adults are constantly sticking language to these developments, it can feel like a football coach shouting from the sidelines: it makes the coach feel engaged in a process they are largely powerless to affect, while going pretty much unheard on the pitch. Anyway, the desire within the infant to secure these capabilities is so overwhelming that I doubt there is much that is going to stop this beautiful little natural-born failer from dusting themselves off and starting all over again.

Once we start school we turn our focus too quickly to the itchy screeds of substantive knowledge associated with the many different subjects we ‘need’ children to ‘secure’. I’d love to see the graphic, but I imagine the arc of learning flattens out significantly when compared with 0 - 4.

And from this point onwards, motivation goes from intrinsic to extrinsic before dying altogether for too many. Such is the drop-off in any desire to independently, joyfully and determinedly engage in anything beyond the most rudimentary and superficial activities (delivering pre-determinded and standardised outcomes) that the adults around the youngster now feel compelled to constantly remind her of the value of this or that activity. For me this hits rock bottom with our overuse of need and of needing in pupil / teacher interactions: You need to do this. You need this to do that. You really need to be listening now, and so on, and on, and on.

Do I really? think some. No I don’t! think others. And I’m with them on that. I mean, we all know what they say about having to explain a joke…

Woven into this phoney need-narrative is endless pontification on the importance of failure, peppered with personal anecdotes of triumph via adversity designed to motivate and inspire. Let’s be honest with ourselves: to hear all this it is to know deep down that intrinsic motivation has left the building. Too much of what we are doing here just doesn’t matter. Not really; not deeply.

Well it should!

Possibility

The answer is simple: learning should be irresistible and inevitable and unavoidable.

The compulsion to drive our endeavours forward to their beautiful and important conclusions must be so undeniable that the entire lexicon of metacognition remains moot until the end.

Here, struggle and stretch and challenge must not be words (first) that are translated (second) into actions nudged forward by phoney need, but unspoken, powerfully felt steps taken towards achieving more than any of us thought possible. We don’t just want to do this, we must do it! To not do it will leave a hole somewhere in the universe.

And we mustn’t waste our time doing work that is so dull and unconvinced of its own value that its importance needs to be constantly spoken aloud, clarified.

What we do need to do is design learning that draws us all in; demands our best efforts; stimulates growth and above all changes us. Like different elements colliding in a crucible, we must be changed forever by it all and become something new because of it.

(Those of you following Flourish & Survive will note that I first wrote about this topic on 7th May in my post Good Learning is Inefficient, so it’s clearly becoming an itch that can’t be scratched enough!)