A number of people have brought attention to this video in recent weeks (it is the Sal Khan video “You Can Learn Anything”); if you have not seen it yet, have a look (it is all of 90 seconds long).  “Failing,” the narrator says at one point, “is just another word for growing.” “You keep going,” he goes on “this is learning: knowing that you’ll get it, even if you haven’t gotten it – yet.”  Like Scott MacClintic (one of our faculty meeting speakers), I would like to have a huge “Yet” button on my lapel to reinforce this notion that students who have not mastered a concept simply have not mastered it yet.  Of course, part of how those students can get to mastery is through failure.  As the video points out, this is how we learned most of what we know.  I once had a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the rules governing sailing races.  This was because I crewed for a skipper who constantly got us into protest situations.  He would carefully explain the operative rule(s) to me, then go to the Race Committee meeting, then come out and explain how he was mistaken and what the rule actually was.  Somehow learning the wrong rule first did not serve to confuse me (as you might expect); it served to reinforce the correct rule.

So how does this translate for the teacher?  My experience with sailing rules notwithstanding, I am not inclined to teach my students history incorrectly as a precursor to the real thing.  Instead, I need to figure out how to make my classes places where it is safe for my students to take a risk, indeed to fail, on their way to mastery, and this is where I run up against the whole question of grades and grading.  A cautionary tale: years ago, we had a good student who was heavily challenged in Honors Chemistry.  When someone broached the subject of switching to a regular section, he declined, stating he wanting to stay in a class with Mr. Kron (a Master teacher writ large) even at the risk of a lower grade.  Can there be any response other than “hallelujah”?  Do you doubt for a second that this student made the right choice, the learning choice?  Fast forward two years, and this same student – his transcript “marred” by his “C+” in Honors Chemistry – was Wait Listed by the “reach” schools on his college list.  I am simplifying, but I spent enough years in the college office to know that that one grade hurt him – badly – at those schools, while, as an academic, I see that “C+” as a badge of honor.

As teachers, we recognize the value of failure in the learning process (most “teachable moments” begin with a failure of some sort), while our students (and their parents) recognize the dangers associated with low grades.  Assuming we will never convince colleges and others to stop using grades in ways we did not intend, how do we go about incorporating the instructive power of failure into our teaching without risking unintended consequences later on?  It comes back to the “Yet” button.  Perhaps if we embrace the idea, and convince our students, that grades represent an update – this is where you stand right now, not necessarily where you will finish – then we can envision grading policies and procedures that leave room for failure and the growth it engenders.  Suppose the goal is to solve a certain type of equation, and one student masters it in a week while a second student masters it in three weeks having failed a few times along the way.  After week three, each student will have mastered the material, but it is safe to presume their grades would not be identical.  Actually, there is some evidence to suggest the student who failed first will have mastered the material in a more thorough, lasting way; perhaps he should have a higher grade?