Let Me Fail...so that I Can Succeed by Lianna

Let Me Fail...so that I Can Succeed by Lianna - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

What is learning? How does an infant learn to walk? Why does a child learn to count? What is it that motivates us as humans to gain the skills and knowledge necessary to communicate, create, innovate, and relate with and within the world around us. I believe the answer lies in our very substance, in what makes us human. We are born with a desire for logic, order and sense, and interaction, particularly with other individuals. The chief mechanism behind learning is our inborn curiosity, curiosity stemming from our need to know and understand the world and how it works.

Is there a force strong enough to stop this curiosity? The answer to this question is also found within our natures. Ingrained within humanity is a protective mechanism called fear. It is useful in that it drives us away from that which might be harmful, but it can be a destructive force as well. This is particularly true when activities and experiences which are non-threatening and even positive become associated with fear.

One way I experienced this in my own life was during Driver’s Ed, when I was exposed to graphic video clips depicting the result of drivers making mistakes leading to the death of themselves, the people they loved, or innocent bystanders around them. I was so terrified of what would happen if I made a mistake while driving that my fear drove me away from even trying to learn, and as a result I did not get my driver’s license and hardly ever drove until two years later when necessity overcame my fear.

This is not to say that Driver’s Ed is a bad thing, but rather to illustrate how fear can change the way a person approaches learning and making mistakes, and can even stifle curiosity. My experience with driving was overshadowed and shaped by my fear of death. However, this is perhaps too extreme of an example to clearly demonstrate what role fear plays in the classroom. Most students are not afraid that making an error may cost them their lives, but they are still learning in an environment that does not allow for mistakes. Instead, errors are meticulously recorded and reported, and will remain an influence on the student's life in many different ways. For example, if a student is making many mistakes, then he or she will be given poor grades. In high school, poor grades will negatively affect a student’s options for college. The effects will be so far reaching as to dictate which schools he or she can attend and what kinds of scholarships he or she will receive. They may also play a role in how a student views his or her own abilities, academic or otherwise.

Mistakes are a crucial part of the learning process. Through the process of trying and failing, an individual gradually learns how to walk, talk, get along with others, ride a bike, play an instrument, drive a car, or anything else that is a part of being human in the Twenty-First century. We recognize and accept this pattern of making mistakes as being an integral part of learning in physical activities such as sports, but we have failed to some extent to recognize that scholastic endeavors require as much of an opportunity for mistakes as other fields of learning. If we cannot make mistakes in the classroom, we will not focus on learning; we will focus on performing, whether for a test, a presentation, or a project. Instead of retaining knowledge, we will lose it, because it was never our focus to begin with, but was overshadowed by a need to answer all of the questions on a test correctly. Additionally, making mistakes, which are a part of the exploratory process of discovery, can solidify correct techniques and information in the mind of the learner. Without the opportunity or the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them, a student will be driven away from satisfying his or her natural curiosity and will never learn how to learn.

My advice to teachers is this: give me a chance to make mistakes. Create for students an opportunity to be wrong, to mess up, and to get things mixed up, because then they can figure out what they did wrong and learn how to do it the right way. This is how humans learn, but they cannot do this if they are afraid of the consequences of their natural inability to get everything right the first time. Failing becomes just that, failure, unless students can have the freedom and security necessary to learn that mistakes are a means to success.