The other day, I selected a book from my bookshelf because I wanted to remind myself of the last time I read a selection from it to our elementary and middle school children. The book, The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank (1976), is a collection of funny, yet meaningful stories about families, raising children, and life’s many challenges, written in a way only Erma Bombeck could write. The story I re-read was “Ralph Corlis, The Coach Who Played to Lose.” It’s about a father who, after the death of his wife, moved to the suburbs to carve out a new life for his two sons and himself. The most meaningful part for me is when two Little League coaches confront Ralph demanding to know why he coaches his team to lose games. Ralph replies, “It’s hard to explain, but kids go all through their lives learning how to win, but no one ever teaches them how to lose. Just think about it. Most kids don’t know how to handle defeat. They fall apart. It’s important to know how to lose because you do a lot of it when you grow up. You have to have perspective — how to know what is important to lose and what isn’t important.”
My years of experience as a father, educator, and individual have taught me that, in fact, Ralph is right; failure motivates and forces us to get things right. And yet, we work so hard to protect our children from it. What originally drew my attention to the Bombeck story was my last letter to the parents at my school, which focused on the “f” word. In it, I wrote, “One word that would most assuredly not appear on any list [that describes children] and is one of the most helpful character builders for children and adults is ‘failure.’ Unfortunately, we shy away from using that word with children and each other, and yet, it is a word we have to live with our whole lives. For some, failure serves as a roadblock; for others, it is an obstacle to navigate around to a higher ground; and still for others, it provides the inspiration to get it right.”
Imagine how life would be without trial-and-error. Sir Ken Robinson — an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation, and human resources, and professor of education — expressed this concept and belief best during his lecture at the 2006 Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference when he said, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
Robinson cites Dr. Maria Montessori in his lecture’s bibliography. Coincidentally, in Montessori Today, author Paula Polk Lillard states, “It is psychological security, engendered in part by a properly structured environment, which gives children the impulse to try harder to face the unknown, including the unpleasant facts of life. The goal is to help children use their human energies to deal with the failures and disappointments of their lives and not be destroyed by them.”
Last fall, Howard Gardner spoke to the faculty and staff at my school about his theory of multiple intelligences. Rather than focusing on linguistic and quantitative reasoning — the two forms of intelligences most often valued in schools — Gardner posits that human intelligence also includes artistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and kinesthetic intelligences. By placing emphasis on this broad range of intelligences and abilities, he said, we can broaden the scope of how we assess ourselves and our children.
And, by opening up more avenues for approaching and solving problems, we can also help to diffuse our fear of failure. By trying and failing, or trying and succeeding, in the various forms of intelligence, we come to know our strengths and weaknesses and develop a strong, resilient sense of self. In his closing to those assembled, Gardner shared this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Character is more important than intellect.”
In the 2008 winter issue of this magazine, Carol Dweck’s article, “Brainology,” highlighted the value of trial-and-error in child development. Dweck researched the differences in children who have a fixed mindset about intelligence versus those who have a growth mindset. Children with a fixed mindset believe “that intelligence is fixed, that each person has a certain amount and that’s that” while children with a growth mindset “believe that intelligence is a potential that can be realized through learning. As a result, confronting challenges, profiting from mistakes, and persevering in the face of setbacks become ways of getting smarter.” Dweck cleverly tells us that even “Einstein wasn’t Einstein until he put in years of focused hard work.”
The ways in which our children approach challenges and overcome failure determine how successful they will become later on in life. It seems that Ralph Corlis had the right idea. We can’t really win in life if we don’t also learn to lose.