The School Teaching Students That it’s OK to Fail

One Melbourne school is embracing failure in a world where high ATARs and success are celebrated.

Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School will share the worst stuff-ups of teachers in ‘Failure Week’. They want to teach students that failure is essential to success. They are noticing that perfectionism and concerns about grades are causing anxiety and want the girls to recognise making mistakes is all part of the learning process.

The raw and personal stories are designed to normalise failure.

“The whole idea of the week is to get students not only to fail but to be OK about publicly failing,” Dr McPherson said.

“One of the big issues is that students are reluctant to display their learning or their knowledge or their curiosity for fear of not being right.”

Failure week aims to build resilience, reduce mental health issues and prepare students for the real world.

Overseas students who outperform their Australian peers in international education rankings are more resilient, according to Kevin Donnelly, a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University. “[Asian kids] have a stronger sense of their own ability to overcome adversity and to meet challenges. Even though it might be difficult and they may have failed, they have a willingness and ability to overcome adversity and work hard.”

For a long time, there’s been a perception that failure damages people, according to Professor Stephen Dinha, Associate Dean of the University of Melbourne’ Graduate School of Education. “We have bred a generation where it’s not OK to get critical feedback. It’s not OK to tell someone that they haven’t reached a certain standard,” he said. “We tend to get feedback on effort rather than achievement.”

The thinking was that positive feedback would boost students’ self-esteem, leading to improvements in their learning.

“We know that’s not the case,” Professor Dinham said.

“When you give kids a lot of positive reinforcement and no negative feedback … it tends to confuse them and gives them a false sense of how they are going. It sets up a situation where they get into the big world and suddenly they are not as good as they think they are.” If handled properly, failure gives students feedback that helps them reach the required standard, he said.

“That’s a good thing.”

House captain Lucy Wong comes from an academic family – both her parents are doctors – and she initially put a lot of pressure on herself to achieve top VCE results. But the aspiring actor realised that she didn’t want to bust herself to achieve an ATAR of 99.

Lucy wants to study theatre and acting at the Victorian College of the Arts, courses where entry is based on auditions.

“Acting is obviously going to encounter a lot of failure, a lot of rejection,” the Year 12 student said. “I am hoping that Failure Week makes me totally immune.

Taking the foot off the gas of needing to achieve, achieve, achieve and be perfect has been so enlightening.”

– Adapted by articles written from the Age & Herald Sun on 28 August 2017