Preserving the Freedom to Fail

The following is a response to Michael Goodwin's video.

When limitless possibility to succeed is replaced by a system that shuns failure, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" becomes a hollow concept. Not having the freedom to fail robs us of knowing what we can do, and ultimately, who we are.

Even small defeats are significant learning opportunities. Parenting psychologist Jim Taylor explains: "Failure connects children's actions with consequences, which helps them gain ownership of their efforts."As my daughter attempts a puzzle, her initial exasperation eventually yields to the pleasure of success. I see through her satisfied smile and triumphant claps that she has discovered she can do it! Why would I take this away from her? It's a gift of confidence, of knowing the rewards of determination, one I hope she carries with her through life.

Allowing our children to fail is just as important in education. Echoing Michael Goodwin's statement that "without failure there is no way to measure success," educational psychologist Theodore A. Chandler states that "there can be no meaning or value in success without the experience of failure." There must be the sting of consequence – really, the pain of failure – when there's a lack of effort, or our children will never know what their best is. And how much sweeter is the victory when what our children attain is commensurate with their own hard work?

Conquering failure is not the only benefit of experiencing failure. Having the freedom to fail can point us in new directions. As an undergraduate at Cal, writing poems during chemistry lab might have clued me in that I was in the wrong classroom, but it wasn't until I failed – big time – that the lights went on.

I walked, awash in Berkeley sunshine, clutching a calculus test with a score of 9 out of 100. After the initial horror wore off, I laughed. This was ridiculous. Why was I doing this when there was something else that I was much, much better at? A few months later, I was reading poetry on the steps of Wheeler Hall, barely believing that I was in "school."

Like many others who've been afforded the freedom to fail, I couldn’t be more grateful for the end result: a stark contrast between an attempted pre-med path in which I floundered and the obtaining of a summa cum laude English degree, which I enjoyed, which gave me the opportunity to excel, to shine, to be who I am today – by choice, not passivity. J.K. Rowling put it eloquently in a commencement speech at Harvard: "Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

Not having the freedom to fail precludes our children from actuating their full potential. Without this freedom, they may never know the rewards of hard work or how much their destiny rests in the exercise of their own volition. Our youth must know – experientially – that they have the liberty to choose their own lives and that happiness is within their grasp.

Works Cited:

• Taylor, Jim. "Fear of Failure." Keep Kids Healthy. April 6, 2005. March 20, 2011.
• Goodwin, Michael. "Goodwin on the Freedom to Fail." Templeton Press. YouTube. June 30, 2010. March 12, 2011.
• Chandler, Theodore A. "Commentary: Teaching Students the Value of Failure." Education Week. November 6, 1985. March 19, 2011.
• Rowling, J.K. "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination." Harvard Magazine. June 5, 2008. March 19, 2011.

Monday Madness

Things, read and heard, that made me cringe. I'm sure they'll do the same to you - and make you feel just a little more knowledgeable today because you, grammar friends, know better. ;)


"Our newest little kissable edition..." (Arguably, this could have been done intentionally, poetically, but I'm pretty sure the author meant addition.)

"But homework and reading are extremely important to my husband and I..."

"Max overheard my brother and I yelling at each other."

"Look whose front and center."

"It's not going to put you and I back where we belong."

"...and that the seatbelt or LATCH system are installed correctly." (This last one was on CNN.com, folks.)

What Are You Really Saying?

I think one of the things I love about grammar is that it transposes subtle layers of meaning over the extant meaning of the words themselves. This operates on several levels (and this isn't PC; that's not what I'm here for).

Poor grammar may convey apathy, not knowing any better, a lack in education, or laziness. Or, certain technically incorrect but nevertheless systematically structured grammatical constructions could indicate background, culture, age-group, generation, etc. Consider Ebonics. Psychologist Robert Williams explains in Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks:

A two-year-old term created by a group of black scholars, Ebonics may be defined as "the linguistic and paralinguistic features which on a concentric continuum represent the communicative competence of the West African, Caribbean, and United States slave descendant of African origin. It includes the various idioms, patois, argots, idiolects, and social dialects of black people" especially those who have adapted to colonial circumstances. Ebonics derives its form from ebony (black) and phonics (sound, the study of sound) and refers to the study of the language of black people in all its cultural uniqueness.

Obnoxiously correct grammar, on the other hand, could insinuate a superiority complex (or its corollary, insecurity), language snobbiness (guilty!), or even the much more benign genuine effort to speak our language the way it should be spoken (as with students learning, valiantly, the complexities, inconsistencies, and vagaries that make up the rules of English).

In addition to these high level meta-meanings, grammatical constructions have the power to change the actual meaning of a sentence or phrase – for better or worse. I love the tightness of a deliberately structured sentence in which not a single word is frivolous. Each word executes its full potential to communicate: Denotation, connotation, and syntax are used in a manner that, rather than feeling constructed, is beautiful because of its effortlessness.

And I hate lazy sentences that are ambiguous by accident. When you said, "I saw your house going down the road" is this really what you meant?



In short – just like a wife is attuned to the tonal nuances uttered by her husband, whether or not he's cognizant that he's communicating more in non-words than words – grammar embodies one way in which the "text" itself affects our assimilation of it: How we say something is as important as what we're saying.

Friday Folly

A few foolish finds from the blogosphere for your flinching fun:

• "I can't wait to step foot in an actual mall."


• "This collection was no acception..."


• "My honey and I at dinner."

What have you seen or heard this week?

***
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Am I Nauseous? Or Is It Just Your Grammar?

***This is the blog I was going to write:***

Let's get this straight, and I'll put it simply: Nauseous refers to causing nausea. Nauseated, on the other hand, is what most people mean when they say they are "nauseous."

So, contrary to popular speech, the following sentences are correct:

• "I shouldn't have eaten that questionable eclair. Now I feel nauseated."


• "That nauseous movie had way too many disgusting 'special' effects. We shouldn't have watched it."

Warning: DO NOT say to your sick friends when they say they are nauseous, "Um, nauseated." (Imagine this uttered with a slightly nasal, super annoying voice, from the back seat of a car on a lovely spring day in Berkeley -- sorry D!!) I didn't get punched in the face like I deserved, but you might.

Confession: I have faked it with this one. What I mean is, I've purposely said "I'm nauseous" instead of "I'm nauseated" so as not to sound, I don't know, weird or something. Tell me I'm not the only one who's done this.

***This is my amendment:***

Secure (and, honestly, superior) in the point I was about to make, I looked up nauseous on Dictionary.com and was dismayed to find this:

The two literal senses of nauseous, “causing nausea” ( a nauseous smell ) and “affected with nausea” ( to feel nauseous ), appear in English at almost the same time in the early 17th century, and both senses are in standard use at the present time. Nauseous is more common than nauseated in the sense “affected with nausea,” despite recent objections by those who imagine the sense to be new.

"Despite recent objections by those who imagine the sense to be new??" OUCH.

Well... next I turned to Strunk and White, my old pals. I can always count on them. Here's what they had to say in their chapter "Misused Words and Epxressions":

Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means "sickening to comtemplate"; the second means "sick at the stomach." Do not, therefore, say, "I feel nauseous," unless you are sure you have that effect on others.

Woohoo Strunk and White and vindication!!!

To speak correctly, or acceptably? The line can be fuzzy, but if we don't take a stand somewhere, where will it stop? Oh, it's nauseating. I mean, soon no one will correct even the "Me and Tony went to Europe"s because, well, that's how we talk -- and then where will we be?

But does it matter?

I like to think of myself as a grammar purist, one who rages against misuses of a word or punctuation or sentence structure becoming "acceptable." To me, that's just conceding to grammar laziness and confusing actual mistakes with "usage."

Grammarphiles, am I alone??