We're All Wrong and Its OK!

We have all had that one class where we simply cannot figure out the material.  It is as if the professor or teacher is simply speaking another language.  We study as best we can for the test or write what we think to be our most prolific term paper and it comes back looking like this: 

From that moment on we have labeled ourselves as a failure!  Our teachers and classmates begin to view us as the troublemaker or lazy student because for some reason or another we cannot produce passing results.  This paradigm, simply put, is an absolute tragedy!  The system has created a student who now believes that they are a failure and do not understand that it is actually a wonderful opportunity.  Education has also created a system where students care more about the grade and less about the process of learning.  What we have forgotten is that failure is absolutely 100% OK!  In fact, there is a saying among the acting community that states fail and FAIL BIG!

Why is it so important that we must feel as if we are always right?  It seems as if everyone is clamoring with the right idea for how to reform education.  What if the right idea is to create an environment where students can be free to fail without feeling like they are less than?  Wasn't it Thomas Edison who said, "I have not failed. I have just found 1000 ways that won't work."  The irony is that we have created an educational culture that has to be always right!

It is time for educational leaders to look into what students can learn from being wrong.  Real learning happens when we allow students to boldly fail and be OK in the failure.  Once students are comfortable with failure true growth will happen.  What is being wrong?  It is knowing that we live in a world of ever-changing uncertainties and that it is better to know that growth will occur when we allow ourselves and our students to be wrong instead of living in the fear of always having to be right!