April 18th 2017
On the face of it, I chose an unusual topic for a recent whole school assembly – the theme was “failure”. As parents, our natural instinct is probably to be fearful of exposing our boys to disappointment at a young age – the temptation is both for us and society to place our children on a trajectory whereby they experience nothing but success.
The danger of this is twofold: first, it is unrealistic to think that our children will go through life without suffering some knocks and setbacks along the way – if they haven’t suffered the minor setbacks through childhood, how are they going to cope when the more serious issues arise in early adulthood, such as not getting into the University of their choice, being turned down at a job interview, a failed relationship or worse?
Second, it is often through getting things wrong that the most effective learning takes place. If the boys are instilled with the right attitude, they will take responsibility for themselves and learn from their disappointments. As I said in Assembly, don’t be afraid of getting things wrong, because approached in the right way to FAIL can be the First Attempt In Learning. As Thomas Edison famously said on the path to inventing the light bulb...
...I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
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