Daily Mail 2005

THE IMPORTANCE OF FAILURE

No less a person that the eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung believed that success teaches nothing. Failure, he judged, forces you to confront the methods you have used, and it also opens the way to ‘a deeper truth.’  But what that truth may be will be of no interest to Liz Beattie, the well-meaning retired teacher who has called for the word ‘failure’ to be banned from our nation’s classrooms and replaced by the ridiculous, politically correct phrase ‘deferred success’ .Next week she will put this mealy-mouthed motion to the annual conference of the Professional Association of Teachers. Well, I hope her success is not deferred.  If this motion doesn’t fail it will carry a potentially damaging message into our schools.

As a children’s author as well as a journalist I am sometimes asked to present prizes at school gatherings, when I like to tell the young how useful it is to learn how to fail. There they are, proudly clutching their GCSE or A level certificates, sports trophies and prize books, and this women in a posh frock stands there saying that they should be glad they did well, but realise too that success will often elude them - and learn to cope. Would that kind-hearted teacher think this unnecessarily stern? I think it the most helpful and positive message I can bring to those about to enter the real world.

I suppose I was trained to be tough. At the end of the ‘fifties my Liverpool primary school had a streamed intake, and fifty pupils per crowded classroom  - the product of that post-war baby boom. The top stream was tested each week, and we had to move desks according to our place within the class league table. For me (always ambitious)  not to be near (or at) the top of the top section caused me great annoyance, yet my mathematical incompetence would drag my average down. ‘Deferred success’ in maths? What a pipe dream!  I failed - often.

These methods instilled a healthy sense of competition. Nobody would have thought a child’s feelings might be hurt by failing a spelling test; he or she would just be expected to try harder next time. Such high expectation bred results. The school - like our parents  - expected a lot from us, and in those days, in a  thrifty, energetic working class community like the one I grew up in, people knew the only way to ‘get on’ was to work hard and prove yourself. Nobody expected things to be made easier for you so that you could indulge feelings of success you didn’t deserve. No -it was learn the Latin verbs by heart and that way show you’re as good as ‘them’. 

One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less able to tolerate failure. This is a product of the patronising, wishy-washiness of people like Liz Beattie - two or three generations of teachers now, who have  taken away both the carrot and the stick and offered a metaphorical ‘hug’ instead. Feel good about yourself! they cry - and the kids drift  into the world of work, ready to burst into tears the moment a nasty employer says ‘Hey, you did this wrong’.

Of course both teachers and parents should encourage children to discover what hey are good at, and develop that skill - whether it is French or football, design or drama.

There is no place for the unimaginative school culture seen in ‘Kes’, ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ and ‘Hard Times’ . We all know Liz Beattie is correct when she points out that encouragement is vital, and gets results. But, having discovered enthusiasm for a subject, academic or not, young people have to know standards must be met - and if they fall short, though laziness or incompetence, they have failed. A painter must know that unless preparation is done the job will be shoddy. A gardener must learn that yes, sometimes seeds fail to germinate, but if you forget to water or feed, the failure is yours.

This is what Carl Jung meant by confronting the way you have done things. One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to learn from failure - because if you don’t admit it, how can you absorb its lessons? If you have nothing to measure yourself by and are never tested by failure, you are doomed to fester forever in apathetic complacency. This is the ultimate failure of nerve - and it has no business being taught by teachers.

When the excellent series ‘Jamie’s Kitchen’ was screened, I marvelled at the chef’s patience as he tried to give a chance to young people already written off as failures. Yet - let’s just examine that easy phrase. Had they been written off, or written themselves off? We witnessed their colossal self-indulgence as they failed to arrive on time, to carry out simple tasks, to accept criticism.  It seemed as if Jamie was the first adult to expect something more of them. But children succeed because serious demands are made of them in a culture which knows that to make such demands is an honour, not a burden. And the other side of the coin is that failure has to be admitted. How else can you learn that  - bad as it is to let others down - the worst thing is fail yourself?

What is the ‘deeper truth’ Jung maintained could be learned from failure?  Surely that it can enlarge the spirit. First, it induces humility. All of us need to acknowledge that we can’t be good at everything, much as we’d like to. I know I can never be Jane Austen or Margaret Atwood, but I can still strive to be better at what I can do. And I’ve learned to accept disappointments over books, smile, and try again.  On a more down-to-earth note, I failed twice to take my motorcycle test - a far worse failure than failing the actual test, because - though  I’d spent time and money learning - I was simply afraid of failure. Now, just as I can bow my head before the literary talents of my betters, I can also more readily appreciate the skills of traffic cops and seasoned bikers alike. Thus ‘failure’ breeds respect.

What happens to your adult relationships if as a child you have been shielded from the notion of failure? Soppy self-absorption has no place in a mature, loving partnership, and unless you are willing to admit faults, and accept a falling-short in happiness, you are doomed. Marriage is no place for a failure of nerve; deny that and you will fall at the first fence, because nobody has taught you about trying harder - and continuing to try. And that all tasks -  especially loving other people -  involve a degree of struggle, as well as those vital qualities of humour, humility and respect.

I believe that experiencing failure in order to overcome it is the only way to be truly happy. It makes you search for your inner strength, and flex those invisible muscles so that you are capable of carrying the weight of the world upon them. And if you can’t overcome it....well, that too, is a part of the human condition. After all,  we have to accept our own mortality - the ultimate engine failure which (who knows?) might lead to hopeful Liz Beattie’s ‘deferred success’ in another, higher, place.