I took my beloved Ford pickup to get a quote for a new paint job. After 14 glorious years in the Florida sun, she was in pain due to the heat beat-down that never lets up down here. Worse, the Saturday before I discovered that the roof had two serious damage spots that, left untended would end up with rust and corrosion sure to destroy the usefulness of my baby. I have not driven her much, only 138,000 miles rather than the more typical 200,000+ for a vehicle that age, and I plan on her being my transportation for many years to come.
In the shop I visited, I had the most pleasant discussion with the owner, a crusty, straight to the point U.S. Army veteran. As we talked about my truck, our conversation shifted to history and education, especially as he found out what my profession is. Through that, we ended up largely talking about the ills of our society. I enjoyed the man’s conversation so much, I stayed there about an hour in fun discussion. Eventually he gave me the financial bad news and on my way I went.
The part of our discussion that was the most gripping was how he, a man who grew up hard, left high school at 16, found purpose in serving our country, was in the midst of the Cold War, could see so easily part of our problem. We have, as a society, convinced ourselves that failure is some evil to avoid.
I have been thinking about this fact for several months, even a few years, especially as it relates to my work in education. Clearly for some time, perhaps as much as three decades, we as a society have determined that failure is something NOT to be avoided, but rather something to protect each other from. We no longer think in terms of planning well to mitigate the potential of a poor outcome, but rather assume that no poor outcome should ever come our way….and if it does, then someone, society, perhaps the government, should get me out of this.
This is the foolish doom of our society to hold to such a philosophy.
Nowhere is this more true that in education, but I will come back to this in another post. For now, think about this….all of life is learning and learning that happens through failure. If we took the current views and applied them to childhood, then no child would ever learn to ride a bike, or worse, no child would ever learn to walk. 
Maybe this was the idea from Pixar’s Wall-e where the humans ceased walking, content to never have worry about failing to learn.
If we hope to ever move forward again as a society, we had better come to grips with the necessity of failing. We need MORE failing in order to succeed. With every step you take or every time you see someone riding a bicycle, remind yourself it took failure to get there.