Failure is a Valuable Learning Tool

Toddle –To walk with short, unsteady steps

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project 

    All three of my clever competent children have successfully made it to adulthood in one piece. When they were toddlers, I was not so sure they would cross that finish line. When children learn to walk and then go careening into their new world to explore, their development is nothing short of death-defying. There will be endless head-bonks. Gravity will be challenged. Cats, houseplants, fragile items, and parental patience will be fully tested. Learning to toddle out into the world requires trial and error. Success is almost certain unless a toddler is kept too safe. Trial and error are necessary.

Fast forward to a person’s school years when new challenges line up. Failures are not measured by toppled chairs or head bonks (at least not too often), but challenges remain necessary for those who want success.

Children who will learn to cook must be able to chop food (with a knife!) and use a stove. Those who take up a new instrument will experience plenty of sour notes. Everyone who wants to learn dance or to excel in gymnastics, will endure more than a few sore ankles and stubbed toes. Want to learn to ride a bike, use roller skates, master a skateboard, or play football? Get ready for bonks, bruises, and broken bits. It is normal. It is required! Nobody expects to be the top gymnast, execute a 180 heelflip, or score a winning touchdown before loads of challenging work and a stack of failures.

We humans expect consistent setbacks when learning new physical skills, but do not offer ourselves the same grace when mastering new academic skills.

As we progress through our education, we decide about our skillsets too quickly. We learn to self-identify as math or science kids, “bookworms,” “creatives,” or “jocks” even though we must all master math, physical activities, literature, writing or expression. We must all get in touch with our own creativity plus a bit of biology and botany.

Few of us become a polymath, one whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects and draw on complex bodies of knowledge. Why? We interpret academic bonks and bruises differently; we think they are proof that we will never be good at something academic.

“Ugh! I get mediocre grades in algebra, I’m just not a math person.”

“Yuck, I never do well on written projects. These are too difficult.”

“My creative project wasn’t half as good as everyone else’s. I guess I’m not creative.”

What if we let our academic bonks and bruises serve us the same way they do when learning physical skills? Do you regularly miss deadlines? Let that bonk teach you new ways to manage time. Do you often miss details on tested subjects? Produce new mastery technics that suit your brain best. Do you lose interest and focus during reading assignments? That bruise is not there to get you to stop reading but tell you it is time to find coping mechanisms that help you retain focus throughout a whole assignment.

Finally, do not fall for the poor advice that you are perfect just the way you are, no more effort needed. You and I both know that you would prefer to feel confident about things that interest you and you would rather feel at least competent in things that interest you less. Humans are happiest when we are toddling forward, learning new things, and acquiring new skills. Bruises and bonks let us know when to strengthen ourselves in some way so we can become proficient, then competent, and then finally confident. Failure is a valuable learning tool.

Melancholy is a Classical Mood

Gear up for New Beginnings

Amy Barr of The Lukeion Project

The world is currently suffering from some very Classical maladies such as melancholy, a term that comes from Greek: µέλαινα χολή melaina chole meaning “black bile.” In the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Hippocrates, in his work Aphorisms (from Greek ἀφορισμός: aphorismos, meaning concise or memorable expressions of a general truth), characterized the condition of having long-lasting fears and despondence as melancholia, a physical problem characterized by mental symptoms.

If you prefer some Latin roots, try lugubriousness (Latin lugere, "to mourn") or moroseness, (Latin morosus, "self-will or fastidious habit"); and saturnineness, (Sāturnīnus, "under the influence of the planet Saturn") which brings us back full circle since both Greeks and Romans thought dark moods meant one was under the influence of the planet Saturn.

Both the Greeks and Romans viewed the god Saturn (Cronos to the Greeks) as being the guy in charge of agriculture (specifically the harvest), periodic renewal, and liberation. He’s the one we see as an old man carrying a sickle due to his primary job in agriculture. His iconography is often confused with the “grim reaper” in modern times. Even a few decades ago, Saturn was the illustration commonly used along side best wishes as we would ring in a happy new year. His overall vibe was “out with the old, in with the new.” The Romans named January after the two-faced god Janus, a fellow that was in charge of endings and, simultaneous new beginnings.

Melancholy, a mournful wistfulness, often precedes great changes. The “best of all holidays,” according to the Roman poet Catullus, was the festival for Saturn in late December. About the time they couldn't stand one more long dark dreary cold day, the Romans threw huge parties, decorated everything lavishly, exchanged jobs between the powerless and powerful while they also exchanged gifts to celebrate Saturnalia.

As an educator, I have seen a lot of students suffering from melancholy over the past 18 months. Who can blame them? It can be difficult to focus on mundane classwork if one isn’t certain what life will look like in an uncertain future. Everyone is wistful about the past and uneasy in their new terrain. Uncharted territory isn’t all that fun.

Students: even if gloom is in the room and typical enticements are few, what can offer sufficient inspiration to engage in one’s studies with excellence even during times of great uncertainty?

Prior to roughly 100 years ago, no significant percentage of the population enjoyed a college education. People were not, contrary to modern spin, poorly educated. On the contrary! Flip through an original edition of McGuffey Readers to see that most students mastered material by 6^th grade that colleges won’t touch until students enter upper-level seminars, if ever. While the decline (collapse) of education is worthy of multiple blogs, suffice it to say that history’s best thinkers, inventors, writers, speakers, artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs achieved greatness without pomp and circumstance.

A good education—one that is rich with literature and well-stocked with essentials like language mastery, logic, rhetoric, sciences, maths, and then adorned with music, arts, and a broad exposure to practical skills—is the key to unlocking the future in any form it might take.

The future should not be framed in terms of diplomas and acceptance letters even under the best conditions. In times of great uncertainty and certain change, think of education as an epic RPG (roll playing game, for you old folks) in which YOU prepare yourself for the ultimate boss by accumulating skills and strengths in your path. There’s no older sibling or neighbor to spoil the end of this game for you and there are few cheat codes available. You will have no idea what the final boss will throw at you so get ready now. Accumulate strengths, skills, experience, energy, equipment, and even teammates to help you along the way. Train well and you’ll succeed, even if all your battles will be fought in new territory.

What Would You Do if You Were Brave?

By Amy Barr the Mostly Fearless

I am not afraid of too many things except squash bugs. There are probably several reasons why this is the case which I’ll discuss below. Some might say I’m lucky. Luck doesn’t have much to do with whether a person is typically fearful or not. Why not?

Being fearful (full of fear) is a choice. I’m not talking about the mundane sorts of worry that hit suddenly when one might have left a garden hose running or that zing of concern about missing a deadline. An all-consuming anxiety -- being full of fear -- means you’ve allowed your imagination to go on overdrive and then you have believed your own overactive imagination. Think of that! Few of us would have much faith in fortune tellers but many of us wholeheartedly believe our own imagined/fictional future without question.

Fear Farming

We aren’t always to blame for our ever-present dread. Two minutes watching or reading the “news” will have us intentionally tied in knots. If you are a student, you might have others help you feel fearful if you don’t take this class, earn that credit, or go to that college. If you are a parent, you might remain ever fearful about what your child might do or be, or not do (or be). All of us are supplied loads of fear fodder because humans respond to fear. We all do stuff, buy stuff, and think stuff we wouldn’t do, buy, or think if we weren’t so afraid. One of the reasons I am not afraid of too many things is that I turned off fear-farmers on T.V., newspapers, and social media. 

Aristotle once said, “Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”  What if we all could learn to fear no evil?

Fear Framing

One of the reasons I am not afraid of too many things is that my usual response to feeling fearful is research followed by problem solving. In the whole fight or flight scheme, I fight by looking at what I fear right in the eyes. I frame my fear. Framing means “inventing or contriving an idea or explanation and formulating it mentally.” If I become fearful about health, money, the future, or really anything, I start to read everything I can on the subject. I look for explanations. I formulate a plan of action. By framing my fears, I also shrink them to a more manageable size. I build a plan of attack to solve the problem. Others frame their fears by talking them over with sensible, calm, and wise people. What if we could all learn to enlist strong help as we go through dark valleys?  

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” —Rosa Parks

Fear Focus

Fear makes us fight or flee. In our fear we often blame others for things they didn’t do. As a teacher I have fearful students who will blame me because they missed an assignment or did poorly. Sometimes they’ll flee (“I don’t want to take this class anyway”). Fearful people might be enticed to fight the perceived enemy or do even stranger things rather than frame a resolution or think logically to resolve and dissolve their fears. Yoda wasn’t wrong when he said, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Even wiser was the philosopher emperor, Marcus Aurelius who said, “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Seneca said, “Where fear is, happiness is not.” Refocus your fear. Look where it is leading you and choose a better path.