Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
February 2012
- Unfinished, But Inhabited
- The Success of Failure, via CNN
- Einstein Actually Had Excellent Grades
- The Physics of Discarded Paper
- The Power of Failing
January 2012
- Offensive Advertising, Increased Sales?
- I Sold Out For Millions, Then Worked At McDonald's
- Steve Jobs on Failure
- The Famous Western Failure
- Thank Goodness for Drug Addicts
December 2011
- It's a Wonderful Failure
- Stadium Destroyed, Reborn
- Failure to Trust the Astronauts
- Failure and the Baggy Pants Tradition
- Failure at The Happiest Place on Earth
- Saving What Was Lost
- FailureBank: A Social Learning Utility
November 2011
- A Thanksgiving Failure
- Harriet Tubman's Clever Lie
- The Failures of Lemieux
- Failed to Return a Text
- Admitting Failure
- A Leaders Job: Support Failure
October 2011
Failure Gets More Popular
It seems like everyone is jumping on the failure bandwagon. A New York Times piece is making the rounds, asking “What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?
The long feature article offers this question at it’s core, directed at well-meaning parents who reach out to teachers on behalf of their children:
It is a central paradox of contemporary parenting, in fact: we have an acute, almost biological impulse to provide for our children, to give them everything they want and need, to protect them from dangers and discomforts both large and small. And yet we all know — on some level, at least — that what kids need more than anything is a little hardship: some challenge, some deprivation that they can overcome, even if just to prove to themselves that they can. As a parent, you struggle with these thorny questions every day, and if you make the right call even half the time, you’re lucky. But it’s one thing to acknowledge this dilemma in the privacy of your own home; it’s quite another to have it addressed in public, at a school where you send your kids at great expense.
This is nothing new. Schools need to give kids bad grades so that good grades have meaning. Rules need to be maintained, not constantly bent and ignored, so that everyone can compete and learn in an equal way. Failure IS the secret to success. Schools that give nothing but trophies, top marks and constantly make exceptions are obviously doing a disservice. We need to see problems to understand solutions.
The challenge is that when it is the risk of our own failure (or our own children’s failure) we find the situation a little uncomfortable. Nobody likes to lose, even if we deserve it. We need to have the mental toughness to accept and embrace failure. That’s the basis of improvement and success: getting up again after you’ve been knocked down.
Many, many people forwarded this article, but Andrew Angle was first. Thanks to all who did!
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http://www.starlawest.com Starla West
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http://www.slaughterdevelopment.com/ Robby Slaughter