Failure. Failure isn't a word people and schools like to use a whole lot, but according to a recent article in Scientific American written by David Noonan, it is essential.
Dashun Wang and his colleagues at Northwestern University call it “the essential prerequisite for success” based on an analysis of 776,721 grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health from 1985 to 2015. In addition, they also analyzed terrorist attacks and venture capital startups. Here is the full paper written by Wang and his colleagues.
Encouraging students and others to fail is challenging work and seems against commonly held beliefs. Below are twelve suggestions from a recently discovered online blog called Awake Parent by Shelly Birger Phillips.
1) Acknowledge and challenge, “Wow! You did it! Want to try something even harder?”
2) Encourage, “I know you’ll succeed eventually if you just keep trying.”
3) Offer a demonstration, and then let them try “Would you like me to show you how? OK, now you try.”
4) Suggest a new strategy, “When I get frustrated, sometimes it helps me if I walk away and try again later.”
5) Share your observations, “I see that you’re using your right hand to hold it and your left hand to push it through.”
6) Ask for a lesson, “Hey, I noticed that you’re able to do ______, will you please teach me how?”
7) Discover their strategies, “How did you decide to do it that way?”
8) Present a problem, “I need your help to figure this out, how do you think we should go about solving this?”
9) Remind them of past challenges, “Hey, remember when you were littler and you couldn’t climb up the jungle gym? And now it’s super easy for you!”
10) Help them keep track of their accomplishments, “Hey, you can do it now! Do you want to add this to your list of accomplishments?”
11) Remind them that circumstances can alter the outcome, “I know you were able to do it last week, but right now you’re hungry and tired and that makes things more difficult. I’m sure if you try it again after a snack and a rest you’ll have better luck.”
12) Celebrate the failures, “Hooray, you failed! That means you’re trying something really challenging. I feel so proud when I see you trying something difficult. You’ll always learn more if you continue to challenge yourself.”
If you are interested in reading further about failure and success, two books you may elect to read are Gift of Failure by Jessica Lahey and Helping Children Succeed by Paul Tough.