A love letter to failure by Hai Lin

A love letter to failure by Hai Lin - July 2020 Scholarship Essay

It is often said that teachers need to do more in the classroom but I disagree. I disagree because I believe it is the teacher’s job to do less but in an efficient manner, not one that comes from carelessness. I believe the responsibility of the educator is to facilitate difficult conversations and to reach a consensus or at least gather a medley of perspectives. Far too often the “traditional classroom” seeks to find answers to repeated and timeworn questions which is either a google search or a quick tutorial away. But every so often, there is the instructor who values the conversation more than the worksheet, the novelty questions over the answers, entropy over order; this is when the fragile foundation of knowledge gives in and the freefall of ignorance begins.
If you were to ask a five year old his opinion on failure, he probably wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t care. But if you were to ask this same question to a highschool or a college student, it would be met with the looming notion that failure is an impediment to progress rather than the cause. Maybe it’s because the education system as we know it, our parents, or society in general drives this concept into our minds like a jackhammer. Regardless, this can change within the classroom.
I want “learning how to fail” to be a prerequisite in my dream classroom and every classroom in the world. Sometimes my dream classroom may feel like a nightmare but it is a privilege to have classmates. Not to laugh or gawk at me, but to at least acknowledge new ideas and entertain the clever ones. I want to spend more time answering questions asked in the classroom because these are the questions that drive us away from ignorance to less ignorance. And when I'm finally finished taking this dream class, I would be excited to attend my next one because I know that this idea of a “dream class” would pollinate to all the others. As a student I wouldn’t be the college kid constantly trying to cleanse himself of failures, I could be the five year old again with LEGOs comfortably constructing the most fragile skyscraper known to man.
Yes, I acknowledge this is a perfect classroom with perfect students and a perfect teacher. Not every classroom is going to be a wonderland for growth but you can try. Not every student is going to love the way you think but you can try. Not every teacher has the ability to mediate and find the balance between order and entropy but they can try. Trying and learning how to fail is really what counts in the end, the information you gain from the class is just a side effect of the process.