No pre-dawn walks for a little while. It was the night before April
1st. I pranced around like a Peacock, proud as could be, thinking I had
successfully avoided getting my annual cold. After all, I never, ever, have
gotten a cold in April! The tickle in my throat Thursday night, April Fool's
Eve, whispered, "fooled ya." Quickly, it was followed by a rush of sniffles,
runny eyes, sinus aches, Susan distancing herself me (that was the worse
symptom), and feeling just plain lousy by Friday morning, all mockingly
screamed at me, "Boy, were you mistaken!" This weekend was not fun.
Talking about mistakes, let me continue this line of thought about the
birthright to make mistakes. Nice segue, isn't it. Yeah, make no mistake, I'm
still on that "mistake kick." The HBR "Failure Issue" has really gotten to me.
I've been reading it e-cover to e-cover. It's gotten to me because I've found
over the decades of my career that while the issue of making mistakes is
crucial in the learning process, it gets far more useless lip service than
useful understanding and practice, and it is virtually banned from the academic
culture on both sides of the podium.
Anyway, we academics make a great mistake when we mistakenly play down
the value of mistakes, and/or when we banish enlightening mistake to the dark
realms of weakness and incompetence and unpreparedness. When we don't accept
mistakes, we make the mistake of not living up to the dictums that there's no
better teacher than mistake and that there is no striving to achieve with the
courage to fail. We err if we don't teach students to master the art of
building achievement on a foundation of error. We blow it if we don't teach
students how to recover from mistake. We don't do our job if we don't help the
students learn that just because she or he has screwed up, it doesn't mean she
or he is a screw-up. We don't create a narrative wherein paradoxically growth,
not shrinking, should be the result of mistake. Instead, we condemn; we judge;
we point fingers at; we blame. That pointed finger, that sharp tongue, that
denigrating attitude toward mistake are the sources of those demeaning and
damning "They don't belong" and "Students today" and "Students aren't" and
"Students don't." Understanding that, I design my classes in a way that
allows students to make, in the spirit of Duke's Sim Sitkin, "intelligent
mistakes." At the same time, I put mistakes to work in order to help students
learn how to manage and learn from their mistakes. Admittedly, it's an uphill
struggle. Students are taken aback because, unfortunately, all around them to
most academics "success" means doing assignments the "right" way; it doesn't
mean doing assignments and making mistakes, and discovering the reasons for the
mistakes, and afforded the opportunity to recover from the mistakes; and when
students do make mistakes, like the Queen of Hearts, academics scream, "Off
with the points!" Few people in the academic culture really listen to Thomas
Edison who liked to say that he "failed his way to success."
Now, I'm not saying that making mistakes per se is good. Far from it.
From both a student and professor point of view, dealing with mistakes as
people as Ed Deci, Carol Dweck, Martin Seligman, Sim Sitkin, and a host of
others suggest is time and energy consuming and demanding. But, from reading
students journals over the years, as well as engaging with professors from all
over the country, it's evident that professors and students aren't always
playing in the same sandbox. Neither often comes to grips with reality. If
people development is the academic end game--and that is a huge "if"--mistakes
are inevitable, and if handled properly can be far more useful than
detrimental. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say, no one can either teach
or learn if she or he is not comfortable with the idea of making a mistake.
No, instead academics create "no fail zones" out of our classrooms. They so
play the education game as if it is a game of perfection that they don't
understand or want to understand the students' response to making mistakes.
Most students, unable to climb up to those divine heights on the first shot,
get down on themselves. They respond to mistake as if they're deadly curses
rather than blessed gifts. Most students, however, are not that mentally,
socially, personally, and emotionally tough that they can weather either making
mistakes or the subsequent judgments. By the time they get to college, most
students have traded their dreams and aspiration for safety and illusion of
security. They focus on their fear of what might happen. They look for that
safe niche. Under pressure from all directions, they and we fall into mental
and emotional traps by which they judge themselves and we judge them in a
demeaning way. They dream less and have more nightmares. They get depressed
and disappointed; they lose confidence; they shy away, work less with a host of
self-denigrating excuses and rationalizations. The result is that they give
themselves excuses for giving up; they talk themselves into being helpless.
They act as if the deck was stacked against them. They lose air so they can't
bounce back as readily. They start sitting around after an iniital setback.
They make it, without assistance, into crushing disappointment. They acquire a
dog-in-the-corner "learned helplessness" rather than a doggedness to come out
from the corner. Rather than face the possibility of that pain again, students
find that it's easier to cut a corner, cheat, stop coming to class, drop the
course, change a major, or just give up and drop out of school. They, with our
assistance, put themselves in a position where they can preserve the illusion
of success rather than risk making more mistakes. They're afraid to doing what
it takes to touch their potential because they don't want to risk making
mistakes involved with reaching for and stretching out. So, they do everything
they can do avoid exposing themselves to the risk of making mistakes. And the
real tragedy is that because of their fear and doubt they stifle new
possibilities within themselves. They can't see the light beyond the darkness
they imagine.
Now, before I go any farther, let's not get haughty. Let's be honest.
We academics and administrators do the same thing more often than not. We fall
into the same traps ourselves--especially if we're in quest for renown,
promotion and/or tenure, or an appointment, or a reward. So, let's think twice
before we fault the students. That's all I'll say on this subject as this
moment.
Back to the students. Have they learned that it's impossible to be in
college without making mistakes? Have they learned that they cannot be
"perfectionists?" Have they learned, as Einstein once said, that anyone who
doesn't make a mistake isn't really doing anything? Have they learned that
being so cautious they may as well not be in school at all? They don't
consider the posibility that their mistake indicates they may need better
priorities, study skills, time management, or determination, or just to work
harder; or, if they're special needs students to get on meds or to secure
accommodations. They think only of the humiliation and embarrassment they
felt. What most students need, then, is a care package for their spirits. And
so, if we are to truly teach what it takes to achieve, we ought to include
three truths: (1) that learning takes making mistakes, (2) that learning
takes learning how to respond to mistakes, and (3) that learning takes learning
from those mistakes and do it better next time. We have to help them
understand that making the mistake is not the mistake. It would be, as it has
been for so long, a mistake to do otherwise. The best way to teach students to
succeed, to become what I call "good mistakers," is to teach them to fall and
then get up by offering what Carol Dweck calls "effective praise" in order to
reach what Martin Seligman calls "learned resilence." But, as Paul Harvey used
to say, that's the rest of the story.
Make it a good day.
---
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