America and the Freedom to Fail

Our world today has made greater strides in fighting poverty than at any time in its history. Even counting recent struggles and upheavals across the globe, peace and order have reigned like they rarely have before. Then there's the seemingly daily buzz of one frontier of science after another being crossed, or this or that record being broken. Literacy is at rates never fathomed before, college education is almost universal, and standards of living continue to rise. In the midst of so much success, why are we afraid as never before at the thought of failure?

Author Michael Goodwin points out in his video that this fear is inherent in our idea of “social promotion,” that is, giving students who haven't learned their subject a passing grade. As a senior pursuing a bachelor's degree in History, I have seen this philosophy spread to our universities as well. Curved scores are only the most obvious symptom of a teaching rubrik that harms the very students it professes to help. Academic success cannot be achieved by robbing our children of recognition when they succeed, and of the help they need when they don't.

The economist Milton Friedman once observed that “If you are not free to sin, then neither are you free to be virtuous.” How much freedom do we really have when we're only allowed to succeed? Yet this philosophy so pervasive in our school system has been adopted by our government. Rather than letting corporations fail when they can't turn a profit, Congress has voted to rescue them. This sends them the same message that schools send our children: ethical, honest, and diligent behavior doesn't matter. You can do just as well with less work, less honesty and less accountability.

We are created to learn by failure; it's at the very core of what's made us great as a nation. George Washington's celebrated victories at Trenton and Monmouth came only after crushing defeats had taught him what tactics didn't work. Our Founding Fathers never would have proposed the Constitution if they hadn't faced the shortcomings of their Articles of Confederation. The same is true of the new and uniquely American ideas of "capitalism” and the "self-made man.” Would they have been possible in a world like today's when they fundamentally depend on rewarding only the successful? If he had lived in an era of "social promotion,” would Thomas Edison have been inspired to try his lightbulb the 10,000th time?