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  • Embracing failure

    Monday 6 February 2012

    Categories: Education, Growing up, Self-esteem, Teenagers

    I remember once standing up to speak at an A level Awards presentation at the school where I was the head, and beginning, ‘Today I want to talk to you about failure…’ I still recall the uncomfortable ripple that went through the assembled audience of Year 13 leavers, their parents, the staff and guests. It was a word we just didn’t use in school. We talked about success all the time, and, if we ever needed to talk about its opposite, we referred to ‘areas for development’ or some other euphemism.

    I thought of this when I read about the plans of Wimbledon High School, GDST, to hold a ‘failure week’, during which they will use assemblies, workshops and a range of activities and talks to focus on the subject of failure. Their intention is to encourage these girls, who are academic high fliers with a range of talents, far more familiar with the concept of success, to think about how they can embrace failure positively and use it as an opportunity to grow and to learn.

    Because preparing young people to cope with failure is a crucial part of what good schools and caring parents do. And able, talented girls can find it particularly challenging. They can be perfectionists who find any falling short of perfection very difficult to handle. Often girls at my school didn’t really experience it until they reached the Sixth Form and failed their driving test the first time they took it, or failed to gain an offer for Oxford or Cambridge, or a place in medical school. Sometimes they were disappointed not to secure a place on our prestigious Head Girl’s Team, the captaincy of the hockey team or the lead part in the school musical. I can remember difficult conversations with angry, protective parents of girls who were not successful, wanting the school to reverse its decision about such appointments, or challenging what the school had failed to do to ensure their daughter’s success. (It never happened with respect to the driving test scenario, but I suspect it was only a question of time….)

    If the daughter you love is sobbing at home and you feel powerless to comfort and help her, it can be tempting to look for who to blame and call to account, or to see what influence you have to change the situation. The reality, of course, is that you and your daughter have to accept that failure is a crucial part of our life experience and that helping her to manage disappointment and failure is a very important part of her wider education. You can work with the school to do this and, in the process, help to develop her resilience, her capacity to take risks and her determination to pick herself up and get on with her life despite setbacks.

    Well done to Wimbledon High – and I wish you every success in your ‘failure week’!

    Posted by Jill Berry

Your comments

Life is all about failure and learning how to be resilient after failing. We do our children no favours if we pamper and indulge them in a false sense of success. Thomas Edison-famous American inventor and scientist once said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. Genuis is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration!” Elaine Halligan The Parent Practice

By The Parent Practice on Sunday 4 March 2012

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