Fear of Failure

Learning in the early years of life is about having fun. Fun is the confluence of three states – playfulness, connection and joy. This is obvious in the way young mammals in particular interact with their world. Kittens, puppies, and children all play to learn and in doing so have fun. Unfortunately, humans are the only species that transition their young from being learners to being 'schooled'.

In schools, fun is replaced by performance, under the guise of learning. Schools start to assess and grade in a way that is to benefit a new master. This can have a detrimental impact on learning creating a fear of being shamed. When a child starts to walk parents don't grade them, but when they start to read at school teachers do! This can create a situation in which children create a Shadow Curtain.

Grades create data and data can be useful in schools insofar as it enables us to spot patterns and ask better questions. But to measure a child based on grades alone is to vastly simplify the learning process and to dehumanise the child. Test scores have dominated the educational discourse and removed all value from measures of wellbeing and of human thriving such as connection and belonging.

We don't have to wait until GCSEs to feel shamed because of a grade, it can start in the early years where the misuse of data around, for example, phonics, can leave a 5 year old feeling like a failure. This can, and surely will, have a lifelong impact but turn a blind eye in pursuit of grades, imposing a Culture of Shame upon learners very early in their schooling journey.

Schools are full of people who either go to school or have been to school. We are all products of the same system. We have all had our childhood success reduced to grades that underpin our sense of worth as a human being. Whether those grades are good or bad, they stop us from truly engaging in the learning process. If they are good, they can lead us to believe that we are somehow clever or superior to others and therefore don't need to strive and potentially miss out on the joy of Flow. If they are bad, they can lead us to believe that we are somehow stupid or inferior and therefore can't learn, thereby also missing out on the joy of Flow.

Learning is hard to measure. In schooling this often means we default to Measuring the Wrong Things. Play is fundamental to learning, and especially in the early years of life but putting a score on play is impossible. In many ways what we do measure in schools are proxies for learning. We measure reading levels, test scores and grades. What we often overlook is tracking children's curiosity, courage, their sense of belonging. These are the markers of future success and if we paid more attention to them, we could model and teach children how to be phenomenal learners. We could embrace failure as an essential part of the learning process, rather than embed it as something to avoid, lest the crippling feelings of shame creep in.