We no longer value failure in learning

Today's educational system is being pushed towards a mythical state of perfection, where all students (theoretically) achieve at the same high level at the same time. There's no room for failure in a high-stakes testing environment. It's no longer important to encourage discovery, failure, and perseverance in life's quest for success. It's now only important to be able to regurgitate what one has learned on a winner-take-all multiple choice test that's disguised as the only gateway to college and career. If you don't make it, you're a failure (and so are your teachers and your schools).

Thankfully, there were those in the past who came up through a more saner approach to education and learned that failing is not the end, nor is it the door to terminal disgrace. It's merely formative feedback that when combined with a touch of determination will eventually lead to success. No idiotic multiple choice test can predict that outcome.

Here's a few notable failures, some of whom never even completed a formal education yet ultimately achieved measurable success. For more examples, visit They Did Not Give Up:

As a young man, Abraham Lincoln went to war a captain and returned a private. Afterwards, he was a failure as a businessman. As a lawyer in Springfield, he was too impractical and temperamental to be a success. He turned to politics and was defeated in his first try for the legislature, again defeated in his first attempt to be nominated for congress, defeated in his application to be commissioner of the General Land Office, defeated in the senatorial election of 1854, defeated in his efforts for the vice-presidency in 1856, and defeated in the senatorial election of 1858. At about that time, he wrote in a letter to a friend, "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth."

Thomas Edison's teachers said he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive." As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps."

Can you imagine earning the equivalent of a 1/10 of one-percent on a high stages test but ultimately succeeding beyond anyone's wildest dreams? Not in today's ridiculous NCLB crusade.

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4-years-old and did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was "sub-normal," and one of his teachers described him as "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams." He was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School. He did eventually learn to speak and read. Even to do a little math.

Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he succeeded. 

"Failure provides the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently." ~ Henry Ford

Rocket scientist Robert Goddard found his ideas bitterly rejected by his scientific peers on the grounds that rocket propulsion would not work in the rarefied atmosphere of outer space.

"I never learned a thing from a tournament I won." 

~ Bobby Jones

When Julie Andrews took her first screen test for MGM studios, the final determination was that "She's not photogenic enough for film."

Enrico Caruso's music teacher said he had no voice at all and could not sing. His parents wanted him to become an engineer.

"Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; 

but great minds rise above them."

 

~ Washington Irving

My personal favorite:

There is a professor at MIT who offers a course on failure. He does that, he says, because failure is a far more common experience than success. An interviewer once asked him if anybody ever failed the course on failure. He thought a moment and replied, "No, but there were two Incompletes."

"Every great cause is born from repeated failures and from imperfect achievements." 

~ Maria Montessori

Anna Haislip wrote for the Colorado Daily:  

"When the Columbia space shuttle broke apart above Texas in February 2003, no one knew that it could one day result in success. NASA astronaut Dr. Charles Camarda, however, believes the tragedy has provided both current and future engineers with a motto to live by - where there is failure, there is knowledge and understanding that doesn't come with success."

Fear is often the only thing that stands in the way of moving from failure to success. And fear is spawned by high-stakes testing and other narrow measures of achievement that have little to do with instilling courage to fail and the willingness to learn from failure and persevere. When the only purpose to testing is to rank students and schools, it serves as a roadblock rather than a map to eventual success. Instead of being seen as a way of sorting out what doesn't work from what does, a step that's necessary for failure to lead to success, it demoralizes the vast majority of students and teachers, and forces schools to spend more time focused on fixing what was failed rather than expanding on what succeeded.

Most of us probably don’t remember learning to walk, but surely our parents do, and they can vouch that we didn’t get it right the first time we tried. Did we give up and continue to crawl? No. We tried again until we got it right. But not only did we try again, we practiced walking so much we were eventually able to run. We weren’t born knowing everything, but we were born with the ability to learn and grow. ~ Katie Barbaro

Imagine a "top-to-bottom" list of parents whose child didn't demonstrate proficiency in walking by a specific year, month and day. Thankfully we're not there, yet, but what will happen to the future of humanity when we no longer value failure as the stepping stone to success?

Life would be great without all these kids!

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm becoming cynical in the second half of life. It just seems to me that we are becoming a society that places less and less importance on children. It's almost like they are a necessary evil but a nuisance none the same. Mostly, I get the impression that the adult members of our species see kids as a drain on resources -- money, time and space.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I think we still enjoy them occasionally and for the most part see them as cute and cuddly.  Almost like we might feel about some other possession whether it be the latest electronics, a new car, our front lawn, or something else we value beyond people. Kids can be fun for the moment and then a pain in the posterior the next. But mostly as a society I'm seeing a greater emphasis on the latter.

More and more we seem to value accumulated wealth or our individual freedom more than we value the honor of bringing children into the world, investing the time and energy needed to raise them properly, and contributing our fair share of financial resources to ensure they all have an equitable chance for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." And that's what seems to bother me the most. It's almost as if life would be great without all these kids?

But isn't that what life is all about? Aren't we part of an eco system that perpetuates itself by spawning offspring and ensuring they have a solid footing in which to repeat the cycle again and again? Do you think that the human species was created with the goal of acquiring the hottest new car or the biggest new house on the block? Was it simply to see who could aspire to the top of the heap and become an overlord CEO of everyone else? I don't think so. While none of those are bad things in and of themselves, they become so when the pursuit of wealth, power or position comes at the exclusion of ensuring the procreation of our kind and the well-being of our posterity.

"Are you kidding me? Attend a school board meeting?" 

"No way I'm going to become a member of the boosters, they'll expect me to actually do something." 

"I work all day long and I don't have the time or the energy to have to do the teacher's job and help my kids with homework. Besides, I sucked at math in school."

"Yeah, I was thinking about coming to parent-teacher conferences but I needed to work on my car."

"I'm sick of schools always asking for more money. I'm tired of paying taxes."

Well, let me put it to you straight if you're one who's fallen into this mode: I don't care if you're tired, if you want more time for your own trivial pursuits, if you want to amass more wealth, take more exotic vacations, live in a mansion or drive a Porsche, if your desires come at the exclusion of ensuring every child has an equitable opportunity to pursue all the things that you want, your position is immoral and an affront to the human race. Your sole purpose in being a member of the human race is to contribute to the perpetuation of it and that doesn't simply end with twenty minutes of self-serving pleasure, my friend.

This isn't about politics, or political parties, or other equally less important things in life; it's about greed vs. humanity and you don't simply have to be wealthy to be greedy. Some of the most self-centered behaviors can be seen even in those at the bottom of the wage-earner list. Anytime there's a need to come together and place our kids on a better footing in life, it seems to be more prevalent that the growing response is, "Oh, yeah, another entitlement for those too lazy to make it on their own." 

But I suppose if that's all you listen to on talk radio all day long, that's how you've been programmed to think. After all, it's hard work to think for yourself and that would cut into your own personal pursuits.

Those damn kids anyway. Now where did I leave the remote to my 52-inch screen TV? It's "me time."

Governor Snyder, "there you go again!"

With apologies to President Ronald Reagan, Michigan's Governor Rick Snyder is once again playing fast and loose with budget figures to support his personal agenda.

I came across an internal House Fiscal Agency email fact-checking some of the Governor's testimony regarding educational funding for the coming year. When you read this and match it to his statement yesterday before the House Appropriations Committee, you have to wonder who's telling the truth?

While the Governor suggested during his presentation that ongoing expenditures are going up approx. $200 per pupil or 2.0%, he is comparing FY 13 proposed costs to the existing FY 12 enacted budget, despite the FY 12 budget supplemental request that would increase the FY 12 budget by $70 million for mandatory cost adjustments (emphasis added) (plus $12.5 million for the kindergarten assessments/quality rating system). Secondly, he is referring to an increase in ongoing appropriations that simply results from a shift of funding currently characterized as one-time to on-going funding (emphasis added). This does not constitute an actual increase either in the total budget nor in the overall funding districts will receive. When the FY 12 baseline cost adjustments are taken into consideration, and when you look at total state appropriations, there is actually a decrease in total state funding for School Aid of $84 million proposed for FY 13 (emphasis added). Even if you adjust FY 12 totals by removing the $133 million that is appropriated to the MPSERS [retirement system] reserve fund in FY 12, the total increase in state spending in FY 13 would only be $49 million. This would equate to an increase of $32 per pupil, not $200.

My bet on who is being truthful goes to the House Fiscal Agency, the non-partisan experts who are paid to analyze the numbers and tell us the real version of the Governor's fictional story.

In the end, though, all bets are off because it's the kids who are ultimately hurt by the cuts.

Governor Snyder's K-12 Budget Continues to Equate Student Learning to Widget Production

It's apparent that a year on the job has done little to change the Governor's mind or enlighten him on the intricate processes of teaching and learning. It's no wonder. His minions of cheerleaders are about as narrowly focused as he is, as this particular excerpt quoted in the Governor's just-released two-year budget plans shows:

“Read through Snyder’s proposed education
reforms, and it’s clear he understands how
you go about producing an excellent product,
which in the case of education, means kids
who are ready to perform in the workforce.”

 

Dan Calabrese, The Michigan View,
April 29, 2011

And then we wonder why our kids are slipping more and more when it comes to advancing student learning and achievement. By the Governor's measure, as interpreted by Mr. Calabrese, its just a matter of producing "excellent product" ready to become mind-numbed robots in the corporate workforce.

Then there are others who think that improving student learning means we only invest in higher standards, more testing and increased accountability, aka, more shaming of schools and teachers when their poor, urban, English language deficient children can't miraculously catch up overnight to their peers in more affluent suburban districts. Equity of opportunity is not even in the lexicon of Republicans and their business partners.

“I believe the Governor’s plan goes a long
way toward creating the system of standards,
measurements and accountability that
Michigan so desperately needs.”

 

Stephen Henderson, Detroit Free Press,
April 28, 2011

Guess we just have to weigh the cows even more, but in the Governor's "enhanced" carrot-crazed plans, we won't be able to afford to feed the cows until the end of the year.

Using the school aid fund surplus to improve equity in Michigan

The House Fiscal Agency briefing yesterday projects a surplus in the school aid fund for 2012-13 to be $222 million. Already, plenty of ideas have emerged on what to do with this funding but no one is talking about using it to close the equity gap between districts in affluent communities and those serving the poor.

It takes considerably more funding and resources to provide the supports and programming that ensure students from poor communities and those struggling with the English language to meet the same college and career readiness goals expected of ALL children in Michigan.

This is an opportunity for our state legislators and Governor Snyder to show courage and do the one thing that will help improve academic achievement in low-achieving, urban poor districts. Set some reasonable expectations for use of the funds, require the receiving districts to write a plan on how the addition to their foundation grant will be used to overcome the obstacles to higher student achievement, and measure the results.

That's all fine and should be expected, but to do nothing with this surplus to significantly impact the funding inequity would be a shame. It would also send a solid message to poor communities, with large populations of minorities and immigrant students, that you are not worthy of the support necessary to throw off the shackles of poverty and succeed just as your affluent neighbors do.

Do the right thing, Lansing.