By Dr Anand Kulkarni
In an era where anxiety among students is high and pressure to obtain the highest marks possible in traditional classroom environments is very significant, there is scarcely any room for error. The idea of failure week is to embrace different things, and understand that learning from failure is often more valuable than lessons from success.
Failure as a source of learning
In an Australian First (and World second), the exclusive school Ivanhoe Girls Grammar, recently instituted failure week. This novel experiment was designed to encourage the idea that failure, experimentation and moving out of the comfort zone have much to recommend.
As part of the activities, students from early learning right through to senior levels were encouraged to undertake juggling, medieval poetry recitals, cryptic crosswords and dancing among other things.
According to the Schools Head of Counselling, The whole idea of the week is to get students not only to fail but to be ok about publicly failing. He also said, ”One of the big issues is that students are reluctant to display their learning or their knowledge or their curiosity for fear of not being right.”
Fostering students to become strong human beings
Further, the experiment is designed to bring out many qualities, including resilience. Experts claim that Australian students are less resilient than Asian counterparts, where the latter have often experienced harsh realities of life and adversities. Another interesting issue is the recent shift in education towards positive feedback at all turns. It is believed that it may provide a false sense of security, thus making it harder for students to adapt and cope with the real world.
Failure week provides important real-time lessons that not all things are perfect and that critical feedback associated with failure can be positive and important for lifes lessons. However, genuine acceptance of failure should not be confused with public humiliation. While there is a view that success or failure will naturally occur and that it is not necessary or could be counter-productive to artificially impose such a construct in organisations.
Takeaways for India
There is enormous pressure on Indian students to take the best and most expensive private coaching, cram for exams, achieve perfection in grades and compete for scarce places in elite institutions. The rote learning approach simply reinforces these factors. Indias patchy education system in terms of worlds best instruction being available in only a select few institutions heightens competition and anxiety.
Perhaps more attention should be given to curricula in both schools and higher education which de-emphasises exams and marks and gives greater weight to community projects, collaborative activities, volunteering and assessments not involving marks. Indian students should be indulged in activities that transcend traditional classroom instruction and build new capabilities and qualities associated with resilience, curiosity, innovation and creativity.
The mounting fear of failure
According to the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, out of Indias population aged 18-64, only 37.5% of people are undeterred by fear of failure in starting a business, placing India a moderate 30th out of 64 countries examined. Thus, close to two-thirds of Indian people feel constrained in entrepreneurial pursuits because of fear of failure.
Education which focuses on life skills will play a key role for India to build an environment which values risk-taking, experimentation and being out there.
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