The Positive Side of Failure

There is a thought-provoking column in today's Globe and Mail by Roy MacGregor, who offers his reaction to a high school principal considering banning 'F's' because it 'hurts kids' feelings.'

Many teachers, especially the veterans, will find much truth in his views on the potentially positive results of failure:

The Fs in my past stand for first-rate life lessons

ROY MacGREGOR

From Monday's Globe and Mail
November 17, 2008 at 12:36 AM EST

Just my luck.

Not only born in the wrong century, but in the wrong province.
Were I heading into high school this year in Saskatoon, there's an excellent chance I would escape ever receiving that report card that sits in an old folder in the filing cabinet: History F… Algebra F… Chemistry F…. French F… Latin F…each “F” written and circled in red ink – just in case my parents might miss them.

No, if this bright young lad were headed for Nutana Collegiate, there wouldn't be much fear, as the “F” letter may soon be banned there.

Apparently, it hurts kids' feelings.

“We don't need to degrade the student by giving them a number,” the school principal was quoted this weekend as saying. “Incomplete” or “no mark” would amount to the same thing, but not so “demoralizing” as an actual “F” – so as of the end of January, the “F” may be dropped from the Nutana alphabet.

I could have used that a hundred years ago in that small Ontario town as I dragged my sorry way back up over the hills to a home where family members were already practising their fist pumps in anticipation of much earlier letters in the alphabet.

Back then, I would gladly have traded my place in the vice-principal's office with those of Nutana, but not in retrospect. Over time, I came to mark that slap-in-the-face kick-in-the-seat-of-the-pants as the best thing that ever happened. It was about discovering you just couldn't slide through without paying the slightest attention. When the school let me back in after some inappropriate snivelling, I had learned a lesson that didn't have a classroom – and I like to think I never forgot it.

We don't spend enough time on the plus side of failure.

It was interesting to watch Michael Ignatieff this week as he announced he was once again running for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada and practically boasted about his spectacular flameout in the same quest two years ago. And the reception among pundits this time round seemed curiously warmer, as if failure first time round had somehow made him a more rounded and more attractive candidate.

Certainly failure did not hold back Saskatchewan's most famous politician. John Diefenbaker ran six times before he finally won an election, then ran, and lost, twice for the Conservative leadership before finally becoming Prime Minister of Canada with what was then the largest majority victory ever.

In Peter C. Newman's instantly celebrated new book Izzy: The Passionate Life and Turbulent Times of Izzy Asper, Newman points out that Asper's magnificent failure in politics (he was once leader of the Manitoba Liberals) drove him back to business, where he eventually built his massive media empire.

But that's just politics, where ultimate failure is a given – at least in a country like Canada where the citizens tend to eat their own grown-ups.

The arts are no different. British mystery author John Creasey was rejected 743 times before selling his first novel – and went on to publish at least 500 more. Pearl S. Buck had a dozen rejection slips before The Good Earth found a publisher.

British author J.K. Rowling is the world's most successful living writer – a billionaire who has sold hundreds of millions of her Harry Potter books – and yet her convocation address this past June to the graduates of Harvard University was entitled: The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.

Harvard grads, she said, might not be very well acquainted with failure, but before they come up against it – as we all do – they might like to look at it in a different light. She wasn't claiming failure was any fun, but she did think it sometimes necessary and often helpful.

There was a time, Rowling told the puzzled students, when “by every standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.” Seven years after her own graduation, her marriage had failed, she was a single mother and unemployed.

She began scribbling away in coffee shops on a book about wizards.

“Failure,” she said, “meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.”

Setbacks, Rowling argued, make one stronger, not weaker. Knowing you can survive a setback and move on makes one “secure in your ability to survive” and teaches you more about yourself than any examination can.

“It is impossible,” she said, “to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”

She was speaking to Harvard University, but I hope her words are heard by Nutana Collegiate, which I'm sure is a fine school with a fine principal.
The principal might, however, like to reconsider.

The only school letter I ever earned was an “F.”

And it was richly deserved.

Some Timely Advice for Parents

Every teacher has had experience with students who refuse to accept responsibility for wrongdoing, often aided and abetted by their parents who are quite happy to blame everything and everyone but their kids. An interesting article in today's
Globe and Mail addresses the problem with some simple advice that, if followed by parents, might make our jobs easier. Check it out if you get the chance.

7500 Ontario Students Get Lesson In Activisim

There is a story in today's Globe and Mail that reminds all of us, whether practicing or retired teachers, why we got into the profession. Since it is such a refreshing antidote to our inevitable cynicism, I am taking the liberty of reproducing it below:

EDUCATION

7,500 Ontario students get lesson in activism

JESSICA RAFUSE
October 20, 2007

More than 7,500 Ontario students raged with enthusiasm yesterday at the Toronto edition of a national crusade meant to encourage young people to take on causes of political and social responsibility.

The National Me To We Day gathering at the Ricoh Coliseum was organized by Free the Children, the organization founded by activist Craig Kielburger in 1995 when he was 12 years old.

"Most adults think that at some point, youth in general don't have enough interest," said Danny Nguyen, 17, who's started a Free the Children chapter at William Lyon Mackenzie in North York to raise money to build a school in Sierra Leone. "These movements and enthusiasm show we do have the initiative."

The event's goal was to encourage youth to take on leadership roles in their communities and abroad to work against poverty, stand up for human rights and work toward a more peaceful world.

The day-long event featured motivational speakers and musical guests, with host Ben Mulroney.

Students heard the story of 19-year-old Michel Chikwanine's childhood in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rebel forces lined up the children in his village, blindfolded them, slit their wrists, drugged them and then pitted them against one another. Mr. Chikwanine was five years old when he killed his best friend.

Romeo Dallaire urged the audience to hold leaders accountable for change, question the status quo and demand human equality.

"We are all human and everyone of us counts just as much as the other," Mr. Dallaire said.

Students gave standing ovations for each speaker, waved illuminated cellphones during Canadian Idol winner Brian Melo's performance and were buzzing with ideas during their short lunch break.

"It makes me realize how privileged we are to live in this country, and that it should be like this for everyone," said Katie Pacheco, 15, who came from Lakeshore Collegiate in Etobicoke.

"I want to help people in poverty and children [from] being raped and tortured," said Grade 7 student Claudia Luszczynski, who hopes to organize clothing donations to raise money with her class.

Christine Oliver, 16, who attends Blessed Mother Teresa Catholic Secondary School, is working to organize social events, fashion shows and clothing drives to show Toronto that the youth in her Malvern community have a lot of positive change to make.
"People focus on the negative and don't want to highlight the positive," Ms. Oliver said. "We want to give Malvern a better rep."

I’ve been doing some reading lately about a trend called ‘character education.” Ignoring the fact that as an English teacher I spent many years teaching literature that scrutinized the behaviour of individuals and examined both the positive and negative aspects of human nature, I can’t get past the feeling that by encasing it in an official program, as many boards seem to be doing, once more the message being given to the public is that schools can solve society’s ills.

For much of my career, I felt that educational institutions took on far more than they could realistically handle. Whether talking about mediation, conflict resolution, bullying, drug use or almost anything else you can imagine, boards and administrators gave the public a reassuring, politically expedient and entirely misleading view of what teachers can do with their students. This is not to say that such attempts at social engineering shouldn’t be made, but the problems arise with the inevitable large-scale failures of such initiatives. Ultimately, because no one at the top ever offers a realistic view of the limitations of the educational institutions, these failures inevitably have to be borne by the teachers. In other words, it becomes just one more thing that they have failed at. There seems to be an intentional blindness to the fact that our influence over students is not nearly as great as we might wish, and that parents and peer groups are major determinants of the values that children eventually adopt. But the later is a harsh reality that senior administrators and boards are loathe to tell parents. To my knowledge, no education official ever advanced his/her career by telling unpleasant truths.

For an example of what I am talking about, please take a look here: www.hwdsb.on.ca/characterbuildshamilton/documents/bulletins/september_2007.pdf">