We Must Acknowledge Failure to Achieve Success
Success tends to be viewed through a lens of inherent greatness — we admire our idols, be they scientists, poets, or engineers, and focus on their accomplishments and aptitude. Too often, however, we forget their imperfections, and more importantly, their failures. As it turns out, doing so can be detrimental to the advancement of success in future generations.
In an article for The Atlantic, titled The Value of Failing, cognitive studies researcher Xiaodong Lin-Siegler explains how failure can be used as a motivator if student’s are taught that it is a natural part of the process of success.
Lin-Siegler says that while it’s hard for teachers to allow students to fail, failure gives people “a chance to regroup and rewind the clock.”
In order to achieve this, failure must be viewed as a part of the success stories they admire. If students are allowed to believe that notable people such as Albert Einstein were inherently great, we are doing a disservice — students must be taught that even famous achievers such as Einstein sometimes failed. This humanization allows students to see failure not as a marker of their shortcomings, but rather as the path one must walk to succeed.
Lin-Siegler’s research confirms the importance of this approach. In a 2016 study which surveyed over 400 students in grades nine and 10 at low-income New York schools, Lin-Siegler found that there was a belief that success was the result of natural born skill, rather than hard work, perseverance, and trial and error — emphasis on “error.”
Furthermore, in addition to presenting a more realistic portrait of the idols students admire, research shows it is also important for students to receive encouragement from their teachers and parents when they do fail. Teaching people to see failure as an opportunity to examine the failing and understand it allows them to improve going forward.
This isn’t conjecture — Lin-Seigler’s study provides data that show grades improve once student’s understanding of failure shifts to a more positive outlook. The Atlantic reports that the 2016 study found that “high-school students’ science grades improved after they learned about the personal and intellectual struggles of scientists including Einstein and Marie Curie. Students who only learned about the scientists’ achievements saw their grades decline.”
The research into this subject is new, but valuable, and Lin-Siegler will be continuing to study this topic as an overseer of the Teachers College’s new Education for Persistence and Innovation Center. Lin-Siegler will begin by conducting a series of interviews of Nobel laureates to discuss how failure was a part of their path to success. Their stories will surely help motivate and inspire future generations of innovators, scientists and successful people from all walks of life.
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