Blog #12: Are you teaching students to fail?

Well, if you are not teaching them to fail maybe you should, according to Justin Pope, of the Associated Press. In his latest article titled, “Analysis: College students need a lesson in failure”, Pope brings to forefront how colleges tend to bring in the best and brightest speakers to enlighten the student body. He states that the blogging being done about shamed ex-New York Times reporter Jayson Blair at the college of Washington & Lee University in Virginia will prompt colleges to rethink the issue of failure.

Pope says, “But if the cheap irony of a famous fabulist lecturing on ethics was too much to resist, perhaps it could also prompt colleges to think more seriously about something they often shy away from: the value of exposing students to, and preparing them for, failure”.

Is he right? Did your college expose you to failure?

I can’t think of one guest speaker while I attended University of Nebraska-Omaha that spoke about their failures or were even considered failures.

The article in USA Today goes on to Generation Y is intrigued by individuals who fail because they were always given the medal, always told how to succeed, and are frighten of being a disappointment. “That's understandable — but too bad. Teachers say failure is something so-called Gen Y students want to hear more about,” said Pope.

Of course teachers can talk about failure in literature and point students to people that are failures but how do you construct a lesson on failure? The key according to some professors is critically thinking and discussing with a class what that individual did and be honest about it, maybe they learned something from the failure or maybe they didn’t, should it matter? The exposure should be there.

Writer Timothy Noah lamented how many new college graduates were getting commencement advice from the accomplished but boring. Success is admirable but uninstructive, while failure is far more informative — and interesting.

"People typically have a much easier time recounting, in often vivid detail, where they screwed up in life than they do explaining what they did right," Noah wrote.

The only time I talk to my class about failure is when I am relating to a troubleshooting problem and it didn’t work the way I wanted to. I think it would be interesting sit down one day and discuss what failure means to students and then turn it into a learning experience by showing them failure is a part of life and how to accept it.

Maybe some of my classmates that teach in the English areas could help me come up with a good set of directions so is I would attempt a writing assignment I would recieve honest work.