Failure is Ok. But don’t fail!

In many schools, children are told that it is perfectly ok to make mistakes - everyone makes them. We tell them the story of Thomas Alva Edison, who made several thousand unsuccessful light bulbs before making the first successful one. When asked about his many failures, Edison is said to have replied, "I have not failed. I've discovered ten thousand ways which don't work."

The Problem

Inspiring story, true, but there is a problem. We have a system that offers rewards for doing things right without making mistakes. A child offering the correct answer is praised; another giving out the wrong answer is most likely to elicit scorn from the more ‘knowledgeable’ classmates, if not from the teacher herself. Think about the confusing message that we send to children: making mistakes is a necessary learning tool, but you should avoid them! Parents and teachers alike praise children for the outcome - a consequence of being ‘smart’ - rather than for trying hard or struggling with the process.

Carol Dweck’s Experiment

Professor Carol S. Dweck of Stanford University, a leading social psychologist, along with her researchers, studied 400 fifth graders. Half of them were randomly praised as being “really smart” for doing well in a test; the others were praised for their effort.

The more interesting part comes now. Each child was given two tasks to choose from: an easy one that he would learn little from but do well, or a more challenging one that might be more interesting but induce more mistakes. Most of those praised for being “smart” chose the simple task, while 90% of those commended for trying hard selected the more difficult one. The difference arose out of one sentence of praise!

An even more interesting result followed. All the children were given another test, above their grade level. Expectedly, many performed poorly. The children were then asked to write anonymously about their experience to another school and report their scores. About 37% of those who were told they were smart lied about their scores, while only 13% of the other group did.

Growing Pains

As we get older, we invest a lot of time and energy in being ‘right’. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, we focus on blaming ourselves or someone else or try to cover it up. What we usually refrain from doing is learn from the experience.

Scientific American magazine, in its November 2007 issue describes the case of a student called Jonathan who completed his school assignments easily and routinely earned ‘A’ grades. He always wondered why some of his classmates struggled. Unfortunately, his parents told him he had a special gift and others didn’t have it!

In the seventh grade, however, Jonathan suddenly lost interest in school, refusing to do homework or study for tests. Therefore, his grades plummeted. His parents tried to boost their son’s confidence by assuring him that he was ‘very smart’. But their attempts failed to motivate Jonathan who maintained that schoolwork was boring and pointless.

We all worship talent and assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

The result plays out in children like Jonathan, who sail through the early grades under the dangerous notion that their academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that striving to learn is far less important than being ‘smart’. This makes them see challenges and mistakes as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. Result: loss of confidence and motivation when life and work get harder. If you avoid the error, you avoid the learning process.

Praising children’s innate abilities reinforces this mind-set, which can prevent them from living up to their potential. On the other hand, teaching children to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in life.

What you can do as a Teacher

• For starters, praise your children for their effort or persistence rather than for their intelligence. Tell them success stories that emphasize hard work and love of learning. Talk to them about brain as a remarkable “learning machine”.
• Don’t reward them for successes with easy problems in subjects like Maths. In contrast, against tough problems, goad them to keep trying. Don’t rush in to solve a tough problem, until they have exhausted all intelligent possibilities and feel very helpless.
• Never force a child who is taking efforts into a defensive position because outcomes have not been great. Identify ‘successes’ buried inside failed outcomes in any task. For example, if a child attempts to draw a scenery but is not getting shapes of trees right, praise the child genuinely for ‘successes’ like appropriate use of colours. In any task, in which the outcome is a ‘failure’, you will find something to praise the child for.
• You could even design tasks in a way that encourages children to make mistakes. It is likely to work better than teaching them to avoid them. Studies conducted by Professor Stanley Gully of Rudgers University and other researchers have found that those who were good at processing information, open to learning were more effectively trained if they were persuaded to make mistakes.
• Don’t rescue children from every struggle, settle their conflicts or shelter them from challenges unless absolutely necessary. If you do so, you are sending the message that a perfect result is more important than the attempt itself.