7 A – Failure – Allowed or Discouraged

I feel that overall in society today that kids are allowed to fail, but not encouraged to do so.  They are also definitely protected from failure, but not pressured not to fail. I can understand that parents want to protect their children, but they cannot shield them from everything. I can see a perfect example of this when I go to my younger brothers baseball games. The age group is 9/10 year olds.  Some kids are better than others, in regards to the position they play, and how well they can hit.  At the last game the coach puts a boy to pitch, who was clearly not a pitcher. The kid did absolutely terrible, and walked in so many runs, that they ended up losing the game. All, this, while just his parents are clapping for him, and the coach is saying good job.  Well it wasn’t a good job.  Perhaps good try would work, even though I am not sure it was even that.  Instead of telling the kid that perhaps pitching wasn’t for him, (essentially, that he is a failure at it), they do him a disservice by allowing him to feel good about himself and think he did a good job.  This does not help someone to improve in the future. In this case, the boy needs to play another position, or perhaps if he really wants to pitch, then he needs the motivation to improve his game. Just telling someone they did a good job, and not allowing them to fail does not help them in the future.  It does not give someone an incentive to improve, if they think there is no need for improvement.  Just saying nice things to make someone feel better about themselves, does impact how people deal with failure. In my opinion if you fail at something, then there is always room for you to improve and better yourself.  Depending on how you learn to deal with failure, it can be beneficial, or detrimental to a person.

I found the following quote, in JK Rowling’s commencement speech, quite interesting.

“Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.”

“The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.”

Cited from: http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/06/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination