Bird Droppings August 30, 2012

Do we fail ourselves?

 

Many the times I have wondered why people stop learning. I see it in high school students, college and in graduate students. Almost as if a switch is thrown and poof no more learning I have reached my limit. Yesterday in a co-teaching class where the teacher has been out on leave and the substitute teacher was out sick so we had a sub for a sub learning sort of bottomed out.

 

“One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.” John W. Gardner

 

I began the morning looking through several articles written by William Edelen, a former pastor and fighter pilot, as well as several by Arthur Schopenhauer, an 19^th century philosopher, and a few old notes on Joseph Campbell, a leading writer on mythology. Somehow in my reading earlier I ended up back on an article by John Gardner.  I have been struggling with the idea of why students quit learning. On a recent excursion to Wal-Mart I ran into several former students who had all quit school. One of the former students shook my hand and said he was working on his GED and working hard. The other student said he was working hard doing foundations for houses and raising his new baby. Still another was arguing with her boyfriend across the aisles at Wal-Mart. I thought back in each of their lives. All failed in part or all of graduation tests in high school, one of the students had failed one a portion three times by a total of eight points as a result she did not graduate and she opted to get a GED. She was tired of failing or risking failing again.

 

“I have always felt that although someone may defeat me, and I strike out in a ball game, the pitcher on the particular day was the best player. But I know when I see him again; I’m going to be ready for his curve ball. Failure is a part of success. There is no such thing as a bed of roses all your life. But failure will never stand in the way of success if you learn from it.” Hank Aaron

 

For so many of us we take defeat failure in stride and move on, but for some students failure is a daily event and eventually they succumb and lose whatever desire to succeed they may have had.

 

“You win only if you aren’t afraid to lose.” Rocky Aoki

 

“No one ever won a chess game by betting on each move. Sometimes you have to move backward to get a step forward.” Amar Gopal Bose

 

I find it amazing how similar to an experience in my own life as I think back to my own fourth grade educational failure. I had a teacher who was grading me harder than those around me. I think she thought I wouldn’t notice. My friend next to me had two wrong and an A. I had two wrong and a C. My mother asked and the teacher stated I wasn’t working up to my ability so she was grading harder than the other students. I quit trying in school for some time, until about two or three years into college.

 

“Failure does not count. If you accept this, you’ll be successful. What causes most people to fail is that after one failure, they’ll stop trying.” Frank Burford

 

“Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.” George Washington Carver

 

We set in motion at young ages the ability to succeed and or the ability to make excuses. Watching kids grow up and looking at where they learn always example is the best teacher and they watch their parents then teachers. If we make excuses and choose to not succeed what are the odds our children will succeed?

 

“A man’s life is interesting primarily when he has failed — I well know. For it’s a sign that he tried to surpass himself.” Georges Clemenceau

 

“You don’t drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.” Edwin Louis Cole

 

I think back to walking through the Edison museum in Fort Myers Florida and one exhibit is a barrel of light bulbs all failures and the plague reads it took over 10,00 failures to succeed but it did work. As I went further and read Coles thought about drowning and was applying it to students I have seen many that have given up because the school and society has given up on them. As soon as you take statistics in college you gather data and sort and develop graphs and charts about who will succeed and who will fail and soon students know your thoughts and soon students live up to their graphs and charts and your expectations.

 

“Making students accountable for test scores works well on a bumper sticker and it allows many politicians to look good by saying that they will not tolerate failure. But it represents a hollow promise. Far from improving education, high- stakes testing marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy, from quality, and from equity.” Sen. Paul Wellstone (1944-2002)

 

Alfie Kohn’s starts his website with:

 

“Rescuing our schools from tougher standards”. The statement of  “Learning by doing”, which is a common shorthand for the idea that active participation helps students to understand ideas or acquire skills, is an established principle of progressive education. Much less attention, however, has been paid to the complementary possibility that teachers are most effective when they show rather than just tell. In fact, this idea doesn’t even seem to have a name so let’s call it “teaching by doing” (TBD).”

 

“We need to learn from— and, fittingly, to challenge — one another’s ideas. But most important is a basic commitment to make sure that our students — future teachers, parents, and citizens — are able and willing to take a stand.” Alfie Kohn, Challenging Students . . . And How to Have More of Them

 

Alfie Kohn has been writing about issues in public school for the past few years. He is a proponent of public schools. It is how we teach he is trying to address, and instilling a desire to learn rather than taking away that is his desire. It is about promoting success rather than failure that we need to strive for in our endeavors as teachers and parents. Hopefully one day when I go to Wal-Mart the students approaching me will be all talking of success and their futures. Please keep all in harm’s way on your minds and in your hearts and always give thanks namaste.

 

Wa de (Skee)

bird