Learning to Fail

Over the last year there seems to be more of a buzz on learning to fail. Two articles on this subject in the Globe and Mail caught my interest. One was back in April, written by a Business Correspondent and the other in August, highlighting Canadian writer, Paul Tough’s new book. 

Amanda Lang`s article in April titled, “Why we need to teach our kids how to fail” refers to Sports Canada`s decision to coordinate the efforts of 56 national sports bodies in a long term athlete development program to promote fun over winning. She summarizes from this material that the originators of this program say this is a necessary step since losing “makes kids feel bad.” The columnist is very critical of this program and argues how this philosophy plays out in Canadian culture. But for our purposes, she claims that “failure is a natural process of elimination that clears the path to success.”

Most of us have heard of Edison’s numerous attempts to make a light bulb. It is said that he was once interviewed by a reporter who asked if he felt like a failure after attempting 9,000 times. His response: “Now I know positively 9,000 ways that the light bulb will not work.’

Edison seemed to have subscribed to the same philosophy as Lang, as does Paul Tough. In the Globe and Mail interview which features Tough’s new book, How Children Succeed, he claims that what really matters is not IQ nor affluence, but the ability to fall down and get back up again.  He calls this grit: “resistance, persistence, perseverance, stick-to-it-iveness and passion.” By his description, grit could be called character. Wente, who summarizes Tough’s book, says that what Tough has learned “is that two kids of equal abilities can have wildly different outcomes.” The grit scale determines people`s capacity to stick with something despite setbacks.

A couple of thousand years ago, Paul said something similar. I love the way the NLT says it: “We can rejoice, too when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character….” It shouldn’t surprise us when we hear God’s eternal principles being echoed as new revelation to a new generation. It should remind us of God’s timeless relevance. Grit as Tough calls it, or character as Paul calls it, strengthens not just our effectiveness and success in life, but for those of us counting on God`s faithful love, “our confident hope…that will not lead to disappointment.”