Yes, it is… Or at least I think so.
School is bad because it discourages ‘failing’ of any sort.
How many of you have actually heard of a school or know of any parents who actually rewarded a student for getting an ‘F’, or scoring below 50% in a test or an assignment?
Not many I guess… After all, who in their right mind would encourage failure, right?
Unbelievable… but I do.
“Why?” you may ask… Unfortunately, that is the wrong question.
The correct question should be, “Why not?”
If we do not fail, how do we learn from our mistakes? How do we learn through our own experience, what is right or wrong, and what works or does not work? If we do not know what works or does not work, how do we come up with something that actually works, or works better?
The unpopular fact is that failure is an essential ingredient for learning (beyond textbooks), for improvement and for true innovation.
Ever wondered why school makes you feel numb & dumb?
Unfortunately, the fear of failure and fear of being wrong have been so deeply ingrained in the minds of our local students that majority of them do not even dare to ask any questions during lessons, often out of the acquired fear of looking stupid or appearing ignorant to their teacher and fellow classmates…
Many of them, understandably do not even bother to think about asking any question, let alone ask one.
This is by-product of our celebrated educational system that has through the past decades, produced respectable and high-calibre administrators, managers, doctors, lawyers, civil servants… and most importantly, inspirational educators who had miraculously broken through the chains that bound them to the legacy of the educational system that also produced them, to create a new way of imparting knowledge and life-skills to the future generation of learners that are following in their footsteps (…or so we fantasize!).
What then, brought about the few rare but wildly successful entrepreneurs, renowned talented artists or even the handful of infamous anti-establishment politicians, etc.?
What created them?
I chose not to believe that our educational system played a significant part to their rise to prominence (unless they hated and avoided it deliberately) but rather, that they are more likely to be the occasional defective product from the factory production line, a freak phenomenon of nature, or what we refer to ask “Outliers” on the Bell-curve.
Focusing on them and attempting to artificially replicate the conditions that brought about the ‘birth’ of such unusual individuals to encourage the sudden ‘production’ of more of them, may actually be counter-productive and detrimental to the overall development of the general population, which remains to be more mainstream.
Instead, we should focus on rethinking the way we define and handle “Failure”.
The changing of our mindset from one that promotes excellence and embraces perfection, to one that accepts failure may sound crazy and counter-intuitive, especially in a society like ours where a person’s worth and success is measured through one’s academic achievements, material possessions and titles or positions that is being held.
But is embracing failure really such an insane idea?
Can we not treat failure as simply a learning tool and redesign our teaching methods and materials to leverage on its powerful potential to impact our future generations… rather than to treat it like a taboo subject or a dirty four-letter word, “F-A-I-L”?
Perhaps, only Time can be the judge…
However, I shall not bother to spend precious time pondering about such a rhetorical question.
Instead, I shall go and do what matters most to me right now…That is, to spend some time watching and laughing at my son (who is just one month shy of his second birthday) from making a big mess out of trying to feed himself with a comb, while combing his hair with a spoon, while I leave you to enjoy the following video posted on YouTube…
Relax, enjoy and… Welcome to The Dark Side (where school is bad & failing is acceptable)!
Lee Junior is a semi-retired stay-home dad who enjoys spending time with his children, a lot more than working hard for money to spend on them. While he strives to be an attentive father, he tries very hard to avoid attracting the attention of his own father, who probably regards him as the ultimate underachiever of all times. Besides his No.1 belief that children are the overlooked 8th Wonder of the World, Junior also believes that the human mind is like a parachute...It works best when open.