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BUILDING ANTIFRAGILE STUDENTS BY JESSE SUMPTER TE ACHER, VERITA S SCHOL ARS AC ADEMY
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as your student gotten an F in a class? I hope so. It is an important lesson to learn. One time, I took a community college math class designed for those working to be teachers, and there was a final project where students would shadow a teacher in a local school for several days. At that time, I was not inclined toward teaching—I was just interested in the math—so the professor said I could pick something else for my final project. That sounded good to me, so I gave it some thought. Well, I didn’t think of anything. In fact, I basically ignored the project. I was lazy. Weeks went by, and the class came to an end, and I didn’t have a final project. The teacher called me on the last day and asked about my project. I told her that I didn’t have one. She said I would get an F for that assignment, and it would drop my class grade significantly. It was my first serious F in college. And it hurt. But it was a good hurt. I learned an important lesson.
We live in a day when we are making students fragile. Fragile students cannot fail. They must always succeed and get an A. Because of this, they do not know what to do when they fail in other contexts. We also make fragile students when we tell them to do only the things they want to do. Branch Rickey, a baseball hero of mine, once said, “Men who do only what they want to do can become very narrow.” We are creating narrow and fragile students and we need to stop it. In a 1991 article called “In Praise of the F Word,”1 the author encouraged teachers to fail students. It was a great read. She made the point that it would get a student’s attention, and it would show him where he needs to improve. It was honest and real feedback that everyone needs. I agree with the point of the article, but I would add that there is nothing inherently good about failure. In 1 Mary Sherry, “In Praise of the F Word,” Newsweek, May 5, 1991, https://www.newsweek.com/praise-f-word-203860.
VOLUME FOUR
