"Failure and the Fallacy of Perfection"
by Clayton Petras, Fine Arts
I have all my students complete a short Google Doc survey at the start of the semester to help me get to know them. One of the questions on this document asks them to name three of their biggest fears. Almost without exception, the concept of academic failure in some way makes an appearance in this examination. Failure is perhaps the most fundamentally frightening idea to our students, especially for those who consistently chase the “good” grade they desperately crave. They hope to avoid failure, thereby impressing their parents, teachers, and peers, and checking yet another box en route to a successful career at their high school, which they’ve been assured will mean a successful career in the college of their choice.
This fear of failure is in my opinion the most detrimental thing that has been instilled in students upon entering my class. It makes them far less willing to take the risks necessary to succeed when asked to do something beyond their self-determined skill level. I find the first several weeks of a new class are often filled with reiteration of the idea that it’s not only ok to fail but expected (and often encouraged). Some rush through a very complicated assignment, simply because they’ve decided they can’t do it, and therefore don’t try; the results of which are not a misfire as a result of lacking skill, but rather a misplaced mindset. The exercises they’re asked to do are designed to be challenging to the point that they force frustration, through which they can grow more exponentially. I find they are able to grow further and faster through these large missteps, provided they engage in the proper reflection on their lack of success. This includes both the intentional internal dialogue in the moment-to-moment “doing” of an exercise and the structured critique with their peers postmortem.
The expectation of perfection lives in symbiosis with the fear of failure, and is in my opinion just as toxic. We all should of course strive for perfection, but the expectation that we can achieve it leaves little room for growth, especially within my field of fine arts. Many of our students are grade-obsessed, caught in the dance of wanting to achieve perfection, while avoiding the failure that would push them towards mastery more quickly. Certainly, some types of assessment require the binary answers of right or wrong that lead to scores that by their nature are “perfect”, and admittedly, I at times give these as well. However, I believe that to truly instill the rigorous yet fulfilling academic environment we crave, we must first break our students away from the chase for perfection in the gradebook.
Often students ask me why they didn’t achieve a perfect score on an exercise I gave them simply for completing it. To which I respond gently (and in far more student-centered vocabulary) that completing the assignment is the bare minimum for a passing grade; that their true success requires going above and beyond the completion of the exercise, and is measured in the amount they’ve pushed themselves to grow and move past their failures. In practical terms, this often means repeating exercises where I feel they can continue to show me improvement, or continued work on a piece that could stand to still be improved, even after the deadline for submission has long passed.
I find that about a couple of months into the semester using these methods, I tend to hear fewer questions about grades. Instead, I find students bringing work up to me (often during their own free time) to ask me how they can improve it.
I smile. Music to my Ignatian educator ears.
