
Go Ahead, Let Your Kids Fail - tokenadult
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-20/go-ahead-let-your-kids-fail.html
======
ef4
One of the ironies here is that it's actually much easier for the smartest
kids to excel in school if they have a healthy level of disrespect for it.

Intrinsic motivation is the dominant factor. A student that's actually driven
by curiosity and a desire to master everything he or she can is tens or
hundreds of times more effective than someone acting out of extrinsic
motivation -- the carrots and sticks of grades and punishments.

It is _so much_ easier to learn this way that the other kids who are just
slogging it out seem to be moving in slow motion. Staying far enough ahead of
them to get good grades takes very little effort when you've actually
internalized that learning is something you do for fun.

The real trick of course is igniting the desire in the first place. Which has
been obvious for at least two millennia:

    
    
        "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited." - Plutarch

~~~
psbp
The smartest kids I knew were those with very intellectual, but hands off,
parents.

I always thought it was misguided to advice parents to demand homework be done
at a certain time or enforce certain metrics (test scores, volunteer hours,
etc), rather than just having intelligent conversations about, well, anything!

~~~
mbell
> The smartest kids I knew were those with very intellectual, but hands off,
> parents.

Parents are one part of it, but teachers are another. I grew up in a very
rural but fairly rich community, not because the people were rich (quite the
opposite actually), rather because there was a nuclear power plant in town
that paid 98% of the towns taxes.

I don't remember the exact prompt but I do recall writing a paper for 10th
grade english class about quarks. My english teacher went and talked to one of
our science teachers because she thought I made up the entire thing, she
didn't think quarks were real.

That in itself is fine, this was 1998, I doubt many english teachers would be
aware of them. What bothers me is that I'm fairly sure that the only reason my
paper wasn't just thrown out was that we were lucky enough to get a science
teacher who was an ex-Harvard associated researcher whom moved 'out to the
sticks' for family reasons. It was this chap that my english professor asked,
thankfully, since I'm relatively certain that no one else in the school, let
alone the rest of the science department, would have had a clue. Without that
stroke of luck I'd have probably been given an F and not even considered
writing outside the box papers again, or at least delayed writing another one.

Side note, but this random teacher I had was amazing, he really changed a lot
of the way I look at things. From his profession (biology), to thinking
entrepreneurial, to learning the basics of the stock market when I was 14...I
learned a lot from that guy. All because we were just lucky enough to have
someone of his caliber there to glean knowledge from. It's amazing what a
single teacher can do to change someone very early in their life.

~~~
ef4
Quarks were proposed in 1964 and observed in the lab pretty unequivocally by
1977. By 1998 they weren't some weird new theory.

Which is to say, your (depressingly typical) English teacher shouldn't be
given the benefit of the doubt on this. She probably had a dictionary sitting
in her classroom that could have told her what "quark" means and that they
come in six flavors. But she didn't even think to reach for it. Nevermind
actually going to the library like she probably orders her students to do.

Nobody can be faulted for not knowing everything, but not even trying to learn
is unforgivable in an alleged teacher.

~~~
mbell
She was a 50 year old high school english teacher in 1998 rural America. If
you expect her to keep up to date with high energy particle physics then your
expectations are ridiculous.

~~~
pedrosorio
But you should expect her to retain the ability to browse a dictionary, no?

~~~
vacri
It takes a theory _at least_ 10-15 years to make it into university textbooks,
let alone a general English dictionary.

~~~
einhverfr
Keep in mind that monks in Carolingian France knew the Earth was round in the
8th century. It took a _few hundred years_ for this knowledge to work its way
into popular literature (but was present by at least the 13th century). If the
paper had been thrown out, this would have made a great topic for a follow-up.

~~~
dTal
8th century nothing. It was known in ancient times. Eratosthenes correctly
computed how big it was around 240 BC, and Posidonius confirmed his
measurements in the 1st century BC. The story of how a certain Christopher
Columbus came to read these results 1700 years later and disregard them is
fascinating[1]

What I don't understand is, if there was such confusion over units, why didn't
they simply use known values for the distances involved? I imagine angles
weren't a problem. Or, god forbid, do their own measurements now that they had
the technique? If it was repeatable to that degree of precision 240 years
apart nearly 2000 years earlier, I should have thought they could at least
settle the gross magnitude error that misled Columbus.

[1]1[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Geographic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Geographical_considerations)

~~~
einhverfr
> 8th century nothing. It was known in ancient times.

I was referring specifically to the pattern of how long it took in the Middle
Ages for literature folks to get ahold of the idea. The fact is those 8th
century monks got the idea from classical sources.

The subtext of the paper would be "you English teachers can't expect to know
about scientific discoveries of the last couple hundred years, can you?"

------
InclinedPlane
I'm always reminded of an essay by, I think, pg about how school works the
opposite of real life. In school you are effectively judged by your failures,
and thus are encouraged to avoid failing since it will bring down your grade
point average. Moreover, the impact of your successes is capped, and at a
fairly low level due to grade inflation. Once you've achieved an A/4.0 there
is little incentive to put in more effort.

In real-life, however, things are reversed. Being mediocre yet diligent at
doing busy work in a variety of subjects, which is precisely what earning a
4.0 implies, is not terribly valuable. Instead what matters is excelling at a
small number of things, perhaps even only one.

The conceit of our educational system is that the way it works encourages
students to become "well rounded", but it does nothing of the sort and works
stronger against doing so than towards. Students are discouraged from
developing passion, discouraged from exploration, discouraged from putting
forth more than the minimum amount of effort, discouraged from developing
their own interests and their own points of view.

~~~
matteotom
This is probably the one thing I've hated most about school for the last 7+
years (since middle school; I'm a HS senior now).

At the beginning of a term, I'd always get at least one teacher that says "you
all have As now, and you can keep that as long as you don't mess up." (It's
usually worded a bit nicer, but that's the idea.)

I HATE that mentality.

It means, to keep an A, I have to be on the top of my game for every test,
every assignment, and every class. It means that if I screw up and stay up
late before one test, I might mess up my grade for the rest of the semester.
It means that one night can ruin my perfect 4.0 (which I gave up on after
freshman year), thus "ruining" my chances of getting into my college of
choice.

Luckily, I decided after freshman year that the difference between a 3.8 and a
4.0 was not worth the huge amount of extra diligence it would require. And
that has paid off: instead of wasting time on HW and studying, I've spent my
time learning Python and C and Linux administration and dozens of other
potentially useful skills (that haven't helped much in college applications,
but will be useful in and after college).

EDIT: Something else I wanted to add to this:

I've thought about this a bit, and I think one of the big problems is how our
grading system is structured. Like I said: if you mess up, you're (in theory)
done.

My ideal system would be the opposite (mostly). At the beginning of (high)
school, a student starts with 0 in each subject. From there, school would be
similar to an RPG: classes would have a prerequisite "level" required, and
each class would gain points toward "leveling up." In each class, each
assignment would be worth a number of points, and the total points earned at
the end of the term would determine the points earned for the course. In order
to graduate, a student would need certain "levels" in each subject.

This would not punish nearly as much, allow the best students to progress
faster, and allow slower students to take it more slowly.

I haven't written this down before now, so excuse any glaring holes it may
have.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
"I've spent my time learning Python and C and Linux administration ..."

That makes me sad, you're only young once, if you're pulling a 3.8 you should
get out a little bit more, talk to girls (or boys, w/ever), there's all the
time in the world to hunch over in front of a computer screen.

~~~
matteotom
"...you should get out a little bit more..."

I do: I play sports, hang out w/ friends, etc; but, I enjoy learning new
computer-related things in my free time.

~~~
Phlarp
You're beating the right path. Don't let anybody take wind out of your sails
for any reason.

------
mathattack
There's a saying at Harvard Business School... (I didn't attend, so I'm not
namedropping!)

The A students become professors. The B students work for the C students.

The academic society forces this focus on high grades across all subjects that
is unhealthy.

But what's a student to do? If you can't get into a top school with a couple
of Bs, life gets tougher. If you want to major in Computer Science, any school
is fine. If you want to major in Philosophy, you had better get into a top 10
school. And once there, you'd had better get top grades because you'll need to
go to graduate school.

The problem is even larger than the author suggests. If you're in a large
city, to get into the nice high school with the fancy IB program, you might
need straight As in junior high. And that junior high school may have
competitive admissions.

It's a wonder that any creativity survives!

~~~
nswanberg
The wonderful thing about today's society is that making a living off of
creativity doesn't require these credentials. I'm not sure where he went to
high school, but Johnny Lee (the man behind the Kinect and Google's Tango
project) went to the University of Virginia for undergrad, and after that went
to CMU and then on to create some interesting hacks and products. The
University of Virginia is probably a good school but not the place a parent
who believes credentials are an end in themselves would choose to send their
kid to be a successful engineer.

I bet its extremely rare for a person to both be very well credentialed and
also very successful in their field (where the field does not explicitly
depend on credentials--the Supreme Court is a counterexample).

~~~
sanderjd
I don't think this generalizes as well as you think it does. Even in
technology, credentials haven't become _un_ -important, just less so, and I
think it's the furthest along that path. I suspect most of these kids want to
be successful doctors, lawyers, scientists, (non-software-) engineers, or
"traditional" business management rather than hackers, and credentials are
still _the way_ to do those things, and will be for the foreseeable future.

~~~
NAFV_P
> _I suspect most of these kids want to be successful doctors, lawyers,
> scientists, (non-software-) engineers, or "traditional" business management
> rather than hackers, and credentials are still the way to do those things,
> and will be for the foreseeable future._

In the case of doctors and lawyers (and engineers in many cases), there is a
legal requirement to have credentials in order to be involved in practice.

I believe it is different in the US, but in the UK, experience is valued most
regarding hacking (IT work). A CS degree holds little water, since many of
them are, well, inadequate.

------
jrs235
Amen.

Getting an A- in 9th grade may have been the best thing that may have happened
to me in high school. It relieved me of the pressure to get straight A's and
"compete" for the top of the class. I no longer had to be driven by an
external factor.

In college I realized how awful things were (for those that were driven by
grades). You could look around and see zombies sitting in desks. Most weren't
interested in learning or thinking critically... just worried about getting
the "right" answer and "good" grades.

I remember the first time I "failed" and got detention in high school... it
was my senior year. Thank goodness I hadn't gotten it earlier because after
experiencing it, it wasn't all that bad. In fact I actually sat down and got
my homework done then.

Life's too short to worry about grades and failure and we only make childhood
shorter by placing this pressure on our children so early.

~~~
nsxwolf
Getting an F in the 9th grade had a somewhat different effect on me.

I was initially shut out of all the non-remedial math classes after that, and
over the next couple of years I fought to get into the regular or accelerated
classes. The reaction was always along the lines of "Why? You've already blown
it, you're not getting into a good college... just stay where you are, it will
be easier for you".

I did eventually get into the classes I wanted to, but they were right - I
didn't get into a good college. It's interesting to have a system where you
can be told you've ruined your life at 14.

~~~
jrs235
That's an interesting point. My example was more like the article's dilemma...
not being perfect. Your's involved an actual [F]ailure.

What is a "good" college? I understand going to some colleges will give you a
leg up in the "business" world. HNers and programmers tend to ride the
meritocracy train and if one hops on board then the only thing that "should"
matter in the eyes of HN peers is what you produce and your results. So don't
get a standard job at a typical company working for the "man" where your
resume has to make it through HR BS, instead start your own thing?

I agree, a system where you can be told you've ruined your life at 14 is BS. I
don't know the circumstances surrounding your F. Regardless, the fact that
adults gave up and give up on a youth is somewhat revealing about the culture
and beliefs they have... sad.

~~~
nostrademons
FWIW, I got several Fs in middle school, went to an alternative high school
with no grades, got into Amherst - where I failed two courses in my major, and
eventually ended up at Google (there were 3 startups in the meantime).

I think that if you want to do this successfully, you need to get _really_
good at hacking expectations and doing end-routes around roadblocks. For me, I
had the advantage of perfect scores on a bunch of my standardized tests, so I
had this other credential that would make people sit up and take notice. My
parents also advocated heavily for me, and I was not shy about befriending
adults who I thought were more competent than my teachers and getting
work/academic experience with them. I'd taken college courses at 3 different
schools before applying to college (acing all of them, and in one case
doubling the class average), and I'd worked for a tech startup and done good
work for them, so I had plenty of people willing to write recommendations for
me.

The most important thing to realize if you're faced with a roadblock (and
probably in life in general) is that different people are impressed by
different things. You will never please everyone, but if there are _some_
people who are impressed with you and willing to advocate for you, you can
usually do an end-run around the people who think you will never amount to
much. It's somewhat unfortunate that the public school system is packed with
the sort of people who look at surface impressions only - think about what
sort of people might be attracted to work at an institution where their own
freedom to decide what to teach is itself set by bureaucrats sitting in the
State House who have never gone near a classroom. It's doubly unfortunate that
these are people in authority who have significant power over how our kids
turn out. But the real world itself is much broader and more malleable than
the classroom, and you can hack your way around a bad classroom experience.

~~~
nsxwolf
There's probably a lot of kids today that could benefit from hearing a story
like yours.

~~~
pcurve
it's a nice story, but it doesn't apply to 99% of kids who do not possess the
same level of intelligence this person.

In today's academic environment, it's downright impossible to get an F as a
gifted person, unless you're making a statement.

And that's a luxury most kids including highly intelligent ones (IQ 130+ or
top 3-4%) don't have.

~~~
nostrademons
I'm always reluctant to chalk things up to raw intelligence, because
intelligence is a really complex, many-faceted concept and when many people
say "He's really smart" they really mean "He's put in the time to learn how to
do things that I don't understand myself." I will admit, though, that
intelligence probably helped me, and the "ace your standardized tests" route
probably wouldn't work for someone who can't just look at a math problem and
know how to solve it without learning the material.

However, my broader point is that you should _use the advantages you 've been
given_ to make a mark on the outside world and work your way around obstacles.
For me, that was intelligence and mathematical ability. However, other people
have other strengths that they could be using but many aren't. My girlfriend
realized in high school she would never be super-special in academics or test
scores (though she's no slouch either), but she's a champion networker and
really good at putting people at ease, and that's gotten her a job as an
investor at a highly-regarded philanthropic foundation. My uncle struggled
throughout high school, almost didn't get into college, took 5 years to
graduate - but found that he has a knack for cars, and now makes a very good
living owning a chain of auto-body stores.

------
dethstar
The thing the girl said reminded me of my little nieces and nephews. They are
in either Highschool or jr high, whenever I've asked them what they want to
study, or do in life they just say "something easy". By easy it doesn't mean
not challenging or that requires no effort, it means that they are certain
they're going to pass, that's all they care about. And since they haven't
experimented/looked in other fields, for fear of failing, they are also not
sure what they want to do at all. When I talk to their mother, she just wants
them to be teachers like her, because she could probably get them a job.

So yeah, it is pretty harmful. Let them fail.

------
nickff
This piece reminded me of an earlier NYT piece, where the author suggested
that students drop out of STEM because of the low grades they receive compared
to similar peers in other faculties.[1] It is somewhat strange that students
in different fields are compared through the lens of a grading system which
does not reflect the subject matter differences, or the grade inflation which
has affected each field differently.

[1] [http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/why-students-
le...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/why-students-leave-the-
engineering-track/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0)

~~~
Balgair
Thank you for the NYT article link. It is a fact that grade inflation occurs
in the humanities at many school. Earlier posters state that Harvard Biz.
School only give 5% of the class a C. My brother incurred this problem when
applying for grad school in the medical field. He was a physics major,
arguably one of the hardest majors on most campuses, and got a proud 3.0 based
on a strict bell curve. Top 15% of the class is pretty nice. However, in the
bio field, with GPA inflating a C to a B, this made him seem totally average.
Many schools just rejected him outright based on this (he thinks)

What to do? A standard has to be set, and as been. But professors can do as
they please. Inflating grades has all the wrong incentives, which is why it
happens. Schools give high GPA, kids give alumni dollars back with better
jobs, repeat. However, now you can't compare the kids as the metric is borked.

garbage in = garbage out.

------
pirateking
Trying to get a 0.0 GPA in a quarter/semester/year really is a worthy
challenge. Much more difficult than you would think. I tried 3 separate times
- closest I could get (without dropping from classes) was a 1.0.

I believe being spoiled by many of the finest computer, console, and arcade
games of our time, as well as being a heavy book addict, made me bored of the
"correct" way to play school at the rather early level of 2nd grade. So I
started looking for ways to play the game to make it more fun.

In high school, hearing the words "wasted potential", were like a trophy to
me. It showed the teacher respected my knowledge (which I obtained for my own
pleasure and proved at will by getting random A+s), but frustratingly knew it
was not a result of the system they were paid to run. The few really awesome
teachers I had, did not get this treatment. I could sense their love for
knowledge, either in the way they were actually passionate about the subject
they taught, and/or the way they treated students with respect. For these
extremely rare few, I was willing to pretend to play by the school rules out
of mutual respect for the teacher, not the game.

Unsurprisingly, many of these truly awesome teachers were fired or forced to
transfer schools. The highly competitive high school had too many parents
complaining to the school board about their kids being given a B, and even
tried to convince the teachers to erase records of cheating (they being
honorable ambassadors of knowledge, of course refused). This was the final
proof to me that the system was a joke.

"Wasted potential", I learned was a reference to the potential of the system
to use you to perpetuate itself. It had nothing to do with your own potential
future, which was always your own great responsibility (thank you Uncle Ben).
I had 127 recorded absences in 12th grade. I still graduated, as I expected -
the only thing more important to the school than student attendance, was
public appearance.

~~~
spc476
In college, I thought that the "Native American Literature" course sounded
interesting (note: I was majoring in Computer Science, and thought that the
Native American Lit course was about Native American oral legends written
down). Nope. It turned out to be "Modern Fiction Written by Authors Who can
Claim Native American Heritage".

Only two tests---a midterm and a final. I took the midterm, and ended up with
either a D or an F (I don't recall the exact grade, except it was not good). I
showed up for the final, read the question, realized I had absolutely no
desire to even bother answering the essay question; I got up and left the
classroom.

My final grade for the class: C. Sheesh.

------
shas3
The key problem with schools is that they teach you to not just respect
authority, but also to defer to it. In the real world, conforming and
deferring to authority only makes you mediocre. In order to succeed, one needs
to develop the mental framework to question authority and challenge the status
quo. The current schooling system, for the most part, does not encourage the
development of such a mentality.

As someone who grew up in India, I am all the more sensitive to the role of
authority. Thanks to massive density of population, weak economy, and cultural
norms, Indian institutions promote the worst forms of deference to authority.
However, rather than culture, in countries like the US, the schooling system
is the primary source for teaching people to conform to their peers'
expectations and to defer to authority. The American society, in general, is
quite different from the hierarchical structure that exists in American
schools. In the real world, you have more freedom to question authority. Life
is also different for adults because they are often more mature than kids, and
are in positions where they have more choice than in the school. Schools
should thus change to mirror the society, while still understanding the fact
that school students are mostly immature.

Often, such suggestions for reform are mistaken for 'give them the choice to
study what they want'. On the contrary, throughout secondary school, students
should necessarily be taught all subjects and forced to sit through all
classes. But, be careful to note that this does not necessarily imply that
they should be _judged_ on all these courses. The key problem in modern
schools is that the 'judgement' system is broken. Just like performance review
systems in most companies. Schools should take a leaf out of the HR policies
of companies like Netflix [1] and do away with formal judgement/performance
review processes.

[1] [http://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-
hr](http://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr)

~~~
gizmo686
>Often, such suggestions for reform are mistaken for 'give them the choice to
study what they want'. On the contrary, throughout secondary school, students
should necessarily be taught all subjects and forced to sit through all
classes.

I think there is room for both. Require students to take 'basic' classes in
all subjects (up to whatever level of competency you require), but also
require them to take advanced classes in subjects of their choice. In addition
to furthering their knowledge of their own interest, these classes also
provide a much better opportunity for students to learn how to research,
study, write, ETC, because they can do all of those things on a topic that
interests them.

Additionally, having just a few such classes can change the perception of
school from a place you have to go, into an opportunity to learn that happens
to require you to learn some things you are not interested in.

------
knappador
Make it twice as hard and require half as many points. Getting 100% at
anything signals the end of learning, not the beginning of mastery.

~~~
gizmo686
In my high school, tests were used to make sure that we understood enough to
move on. Assessments were project/writing based.

------
guelo
One solution is for businesses to stop playing their game. At my startup we
refused to hire from Harvard or Stanford or MIT. We didn't hire ex-googlers
either for that matter.

~~~
tokenadult
Google is now very aware, by its internal research, that school credentials
matter very little for success at Google.

~~~
adam419
How are you aware of this?

~~~
Malician
They announced it.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-
hunting-b...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-
data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0)

------
joelgrus
I grew up as one of these "terrified to fail" kids. Now I have a kid of my
own, and one of my primary parenting goals is that she not end up like that.

~~~
kaybe
How are you planning to do that? (Honestly curious.)

~~~
ssully
They way my parents did it for me was by identifying what I really enjoyed and
what I had no interest in. They would encourage and push me to try new things
and do what I was interested in, both in and out of school. When I did bad in
school they would always ask if I tried my best, based on my answer they would
push me accordingly.

Their way of handling poor grades completely eliminated grade anxiety for me.
Instead of freaking out when I failed I would try to identify why I failed and
how to improve that.

------
applecore
I suspect these parents aren't actually conflicted, but are reasoning through
their own fears of failure by projecting it onto their children.

------
diminoten
What did she say to the 10th grader, though?

All this pontificating about the state of our education system and the
problems with our super achievement-oriented culture aside, what do you
actually tell a 15 yr old who's deathly afraid of failure?

~~~
charlieflowers
Exactly. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is what I want to find
out. Anyone with anything valuable and relevant to say about this, please
speak up.

------
kator
I have six kids, my goal in life is to teach them to make good decisions. I
always tell him to embrace originality in mistakes. Make them big, creative,
interesting mistakes. Learn. Move on.

~~~
namenotrequired
That's great, I love that. How do you show them that you practice what you
preach? I don't have kids myself but I can imagine that to be the hardest
part.

~~~
kator
I've started several businesses over the years and they get to see the good
and bad sides. I'm also very frank about mistakes I've made in my life and
about things that went well. To me it's less about preaching and more about
teaching.. :-)

------
zwieback
How many kids like this are there, really. I keep reading these articles but
I'm not sure how representative they are. I live in a town with a demographic
that should be 100% trapped in upper-class white-ville angst but I don't
actually meet very many parents or kids like this.

Maybe it's Oregon, my in laws in the Bay Area are more prone to this kind of
behavior.

~~~
ronaldx
It may be as much a product of the school system.

In my local area, schools are formally ranked by their average grades. This
means they spend 13 years encouraging kids to believe that taking easier
subjects _(with better pass rates for the school)_ is in their own best
interest.

------
chipsy
My form of rebellion was to disengage and fail. I was a huge bundle of nerves
about it every time, but secretly I wanted to have the experience of feeling
the consequences and knowing what it actually _meant_ to screw up.

I've remained pretty obstinate about this even in my adult life. I like to
fail until success is inevitable.

------
brandonhsiao
I remember in high school the only things I ever learned well were things that
weren't taught there, or that I'd learned myself before going in. I'm still
trying to recover from the hit I took in subjects like math and physics; I
loved both when I was younger. Like many others I happened to be lucky to have
discovered computers before going into high school, or I know AP Computer
Science would've killed those for me too (haven taken it).

College dropout now. School's never "worked" for me. But I was born into a
family where blindly grades were everything, and I'm pretty sure this had more
of a negative than positive effect on me.

------
f1g
Great article. The obsession with academic success is partially the result of
what Academia has done over the years for its own survival: that the key is a
prestigious education.

------
jhk24
Brilliant article. The paradox of creativity and success is embracing failure.

