asking the right questions – the value of failure

May 3, 2006 by  

These are 2 divergent articles about education…but they seemed to go together. Both stories are inspiring and contradict the status quo.

At curriculumless school, learning on students’ terms – The Boston Globe

By Nick Anderson, Washington Post | April 30, 2006

WASHINGTON — Between rollerblade aerials and rail slides, Justin Reed described how he landed at a school that lets him do whatever he wants all day long.
He burned out on highpowered Eleanor Roosevelt High School in his hometown of Greenbelt, Md., and lost interest in the college track. By 11th grade, he was ready to drop out.
”I just really hated school, and Roosevelt brought that out of me,’ the 19-year-old said one spring afternoon. ”Being told what to do and what to learn. Having to do homework. Grades. Grade levels. Everything that this school stands against.’

”Ours is a place for children,” said Daniel Greenberg, 70, a cofounder of the original Sudbury school, who still works there. ”We begin with freedom — personal freedom and respect for personal rights.” Education, he said, is ”an opportunity for a child or an adult to develop a path toward a meaningful life. The question is: How is that done best?”


If at first you don’t succeed, don’t worry


By Donald M. Murray, Globe Correspondent | May 2, 2006

I had left school early each spring in the 11th and 12th grades, perhaps even in the 10th. Enough already. Everyone seemed to believe I was stupid, and I believed them. Now I know I was stupefied, not stupid. I simply did not learn the way my teachers had learned.
What I did learn at North Quincy High was how to fail. It may be the most important lesson I learned in any school. We were visiting my grandson when he attempted his first steps. My wise son-in-law said, ”He had to learn how to fall, before he could learn to walk.”
It is essential to discover that the sky doesn’t crack if you fail. I still get rejections, but I now know that those who fail me may not know as much as I once thought. I also know that failure is instructive.
I just failed in a watercolor. It will not hang in the MFA, but it told me what to do the next time, which will be another instructive failure. And so I learn and then move beyond what I know to what I don’t yet know.
School wants only successes, but failure should be taught, encouraged, supported. If you get nothing in school but A’s, try for an F. You may find your life’s work.

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