Summary
School heads attend 3-day conclave
Give students the freedom to fail, a school principal told heads of over 120 other International Baccalaureate schools at a conclave in the city on Saturday.
Children will learn through failure, said Sanchita Raha, principal of Chirec International School in Hyderabad.
Failure helps to build resilience in children and stands them in good stead in their adult lives, several other principals conceded while speaking to Metro later.
They were attending the 6th pan-India and South Asia IB Heads Conference organised by the Association for IB World Schools in India and South Asia and hosted by The Heritage School, Calcutta International School and RP Goenka International School over three days.
“We need to create a safe and supportive environment where failure is not a problem. Failure is a stepping stone to success. Give your students the freedom to fail. There will be failure and it is the only way that students will learn,” said Raha, whose address was on the “importance of fostering student innovation”.
Raha said the approach to fostering innovation among children should be to engage them in “real-world authentic problems”.
Several principals who attended the session and others said students were increasingly pushed by adults to be achievers, something that could be damaging in the long run.
“In the past 10 years, we have built a culture where in order to build the self-esteem of kids we give them opportunities to succeed. But the danger is that in constantly trying to find opportunities to succeed they miss out on opportunities to fail safely and to learn how to recover from that failure,” said Tina Servaia, principal, senior school, Calcutta International School.
“The danger is we would thus be releasing into the world kids who would not be able to deal with failure later in life. Failure is inevitable,” said Servaia.
There is a fine line between trying to pep up children and pushing them. In the pursuit of the child’s success, parents often ignore the role failure must have played in their own lives. “They are keen to be part of the child’s successes but ignore the need to handhold a child through failure,” said a school head.
Psychiatrist Jai Ranjan Ram said the message of embracing failure was as relevant for parents as it is for teachers.
“It is for parents to understand and accept a child’s failure and encourage them to believe that tomorrow is another day. If parents put too much premium on failure and chastise the child, a time might come that the child could resort to self-harm instead of opening up to the parent,” said Ram.
Ram said that this failure could be failing in a subject, or a class, cracking a competitive exam or getting the expected grades.
“Life is not only about success but also disappointments. It is important to go through the journey of feeling sadness and then trying again to succeed,” he said.
Several principals said failure teaches them how to improve and builds resilience and tenacity in them.
“For many students expectations exceed their abilities and that becomes a big problem,” said Seema Sapru, principal, The Heritage School.
Sapru said for the current generation, everything is provided for even without their asking and that makes them more vulnerable. “Even waiting for their turn is a failure for them because they are not used to it,” she said.
While encouraging children to achieve is important, teachers need to consciously let them understand that failure is a part of life, said the head of another school.
“Failure will teach them to navigate their life later on and give them emotional stability,” she said.
Last updated on 11 Feb 2024
