Thomas Edison did not "invent" the light bulb overnight.
There were many trials.
He said,
I have not failed; I've simply found ten thousand ways that won't work.
(In fact, many claim he only improved on the electric light bulb
that had existed for up to 50 years before his 1879 U.S. patent.
The first light bulbs lasted 150 hours while Edison's lasted 1,200 hours
Further, Edison did own a power company.)
instant failure is a time to:
take a walk
reflect
think differently
improve the trial
feel excited about a new idea
instant failure wears a harness
and
checks the safety net
alternatively
instant success has the potential for:
unforeseen hurdles
loopholes
weaknesses
pride before a fall
instant success
heads for
free fall
without a parachute
Failure may help us to discover what we seek to learn
AND discover many byway, unexpected ideas as well.
A naval engineer, Richard Jones was trying to design a meter to monitor power on naval battleships.
He worked with tension springs and one fell to the ground from a shelf.
It kept bouncing
and bouncing...
The slinky was born in 1945...
Walt Disney's first animation company went banktrupt.
He was fired by a news editor because he lacked imagination.
Some say he was turned down 302 times before he received financing for Disney World.
JK Rowling was penniless, recently divorced, and raising a child on her own,
when she wrote the first Harry Potter book on an old manual typewriter.
12 publishers rejected the manuscript!
A year later, Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury agreed to publish her book
but insisted that she get a day job because children’s books were not money spinners.
It almost seems to mean that
big failure
has the potential
with persistence
to breed
big success
Let's teach our students to face failure with strength and not give them
a false sense of success.
For too long we have worried about students' self esteem
and cultivated it with a barrage of successful comment.
Their self esteem should not be built on false values in the protected school world
leaving it prime for a huge downfall out there in the open real world.
Let's give our students pride in beating failure.
Let's give them a rock
not shifting sands...
I have long believed in the merits of failure as a means of progress...
To teach is to keep learning
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