I won’t lie. I got caught up with all the failure buzz quotes and acronyms in regards to education. You know the whole you must first fail to learn thing. If you go through my tweets over the last year, you quite definitely will read many posts about how failing is the first step in learning. And yes you will see I posted my fair share of pictures related to the 2015 buzz phrase of the year, “FAIL is the First Attempt In Learning.” But I’m over it. And you should be too.
I hate it when I hear on the golf course the phrase, “A bad putt is better than a bad chip.” When you analyze that famous golf phrase it tells us an undesirable outcome is sitting right there, like a giant bulls-eye, in front of us. It reminds us to play safe, be timid and ultimately choose an option that avoids failure. Why even bring the thought of not succeeding up? Why play scared? And why choose the safe option when you can instead learn to chip better than you can putt?
So why do I bring this golfing quote up? Simple, that is what we are doing in our education systems, and with this whole failing to learn craze. Why even think of failure when we are just learning? To me it’s an oxymoron. The most successful people in whatever field they are in don’t walk around thinking they are failing at what they do. They are comfortable being a chameleon, adapting and learning. They know they make mistakes, but they don’t think they are failing. They are just simply LEARNING! And isn’t that a positive thing.
Why are we trying so hard to redefine a word that our children and we associate negatively? Let the word failure go and focus on what we are really doing and that is learning. Failure has a negative connotation but learning does not. Let’s delete F.A.I.L. and insert LEARN!
@rondorland
I hate it when I hear on the golf course the phrase, “A bad putt is better than a bad chip.” When you analyze that famous golf phrase it tells us an undesirable outcome is sitting right there, like a giant bulls-eye, in front of us. It reminds us to play safe, be timid and ultimately choose an option that avoids failure. Why even bring the thought of not succeeding up? Why play scared? And why choose the safe option when you can instead learn to chip better than you can putt?
So why do I bring this golfing quote up? Simple, that is what we are doing in our education systems, and with this whole failing to learn craze. Why even think of failure when we are just learning? To me it’s an oxymoron. The most successful people in whatever field they are in don’t walk around thinking they are failing at what they do. They are comfortable being a chameleon, adapting and learning. They know they make mistakes, but they don’t think they are failing. They are just simply LEARNING! And isn’t that a positive thing.
Why are we trying so hard to redefine a word that our children and we associate negatively? Let the word failure go and focus on what we are really doing and that is learning. Failure has a negative connotation but learning does not. Let’s delete F.A.I.L. and insert LEARN!
@rondorland
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