I'm here tonight to share my sincere hope for your complete and utter failure.
I want you to fail, and I want you to fail.
And in the back row - I didn't forget about you -
I want you to fail as well.
I want everyone here tonight to fail.
Now, as a dad and an elementary school principal,
I wish for the same thing for all my kids.
I not only hope that they fail, I encourage them to do so.
The reason for this is simple.
I believe that the way society views failures
to be totally and completely wrong.
Most people, they view failure as final, as a conclusion,
as a reflection of who and what they are.
In a word, for most people, they think failure sucks.
But it's not their fault.
We've had this drilled into our heads from our earliest days in school.
Some of you might remember
the time you came home from kindergarten without a sticker
because you didn't master your ABCs.
Or maybe it was an F that you got on a homework assignment,
or possibly a below-average score on a standardized test.
Failure has been seen as frightening, and worst of all, defining.
My position is these attitudes are sending dangerous and destructive message
that tells that the failure is bad, and that we should avoid it at all cost.
I'm here to tell you that message is wrong,
and our views of failure are all wrong as well.
After all, history is filled with famous failures,
from the student whose teacher said
was too stupid to learn anything, Thomas Edison,
to the newspaper man who was fired by his editor
because he lacked imagination and had no good ideas, Walt Disney.
Of course, this gentleman, perhaps the most famous failure of all,
who was defeated when he ran for state legislature, failed at business,
who was defeated when he ran for Congress,
and defeated twice when he ran for U.S. Senate,
but who overcame all that
to change the world as our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln.
Now, of course, not all failures can be this famous.
I failed many times in my life, and I bet if I ask each of you,
you would have your own story to tell.
The story I'll tell you here tonight comes from my own education.
You see, I breezed through elementary and middle school, earning only As and Bs,
always thought of as one of the smartest kids in my grade.
And then I hit high school.
I can remember specifically Mr. Malone's calculus class
because that's when I earned my first C, and then the Ds and the Fs followed.
I hadn't learned how to struggle with school work,
or really anything at all.
So I started to pull away from the area where I had previously excelled.
I did finish high school,
and I went on to Montclair State College in New Jersey,
and then I promptly quit after one month.
Sorry mum and dad. Love you.
I didn't want to be associated with something
that made me feel worthless.
It took eleven years of soul-searching, bad decisions, and lots of struggle
before I earned my elementary education degree
and ended up doing something
that I'm passionate about each and every day.
It took those years of failure to pave the way for my success.
But I don't want our children to wait that long.
Because these examples, the famous and the not so famous,
they teach us that there's no reason to fear failure.
It is not a character trait; it's an event.
It's not an end; it's an opportunity to learn, explore and improve.
And most importantly, it's not the opposite of success,
as most people believe;
it is a key component of it.
Being able to fight through, pick yourself up
and get yourself back on track in and of itself is success.
And we must teach this to our children.
In fact, I believe, out of all the things
we should be teaching in our schools right now,
the most important thing of all is teaching our children how to fail,
showing them there's nothing wrong with failure.
You know that famous phrase about death and taxes?
That's all wrong.
They are not the only certainties in life; failure is also a certainty.
Every single one of us will fail,
but being able to accept it, learn from it, and move on
is the life lesson that each of us must learn.
And you're never too young to start.
Therefore, encouraging and embracing failure
is the single most important change that we need in education today.
What happens in schools is previous failures,
they add up to doom a student to fail again.
Or even worse, to get it lodged in here
so they're even afraid to try again tomorrow,
and what a shame that is,
at the lost opportunities because people felt labeled as failures.
But just imagine if schools started teaching failure for what it really is,
a stop along the road of success,
a moment to pause, rethink and re-imagine.
Or how about this one?
An event exploding with opportunity
to acquire knowledge, deepen understanding,
and to emotionally and intellectually prepare for life.
Do you like the sound of that one?
It happens to be the definition of the word "education".
So, what I’m saying to you tonight
is that education and failure are synonymous.
If we accept that as true, schools have an unbelievable opportunity
to not only change what happens within their own walls,
but to spill out into society and affect change within all of us.
So tonight I am advocating for the express inclusion of failure
into all schools curriculum at each and every level.
So what does that look like?
It's not as if I'm asking my teachers
to give a test or material they haven't covered yet,
but there are ways we can intensely provide
experiences for our students,
to both know and grow from failure.
Let me give you an example of a person whom I think is on a right track.
His name is Edward Burger.
He's a professor of mathematics at Williams College.
Professor Burger tells his students
that if they want to earn an A, they must fail regularly,
because he bases 5% of the final grade on the quality of their failure.
They must disclose, accept, discuss, and reflect upon each failure.
I love this practice because it encourages creativity and risk-taking.
And don't we need more of both of those in the world in which we live in today?
This world is aching for innovators and innovations.
When I think along those lines,
I think about some aspects of our world
that wouldn't be here without some form of failure,
like the engineer at 3M, who was trying to create a super strong adhesive,
but instead got just the opposite,
an adhesive that barely stuck and could easily be lifted off,
and post-it notes were born.
Or Alexander Fleming, who was working in his lab one night,
and before he left,
he forgot to properly clean the bacteria that filled Petri dishes.
He left town and in return, he noticed there was mold
that was blocking the growth of the bacteria,
and thereby discovered penicillin.
Or how about Willson Greatbatch?
He was trying to create a heart rhythm recording device
and he pulled the wrong part out of a box of equipment.
And he plugged it in a circuit,
and he noticed he had created a sound
that was remarkably similar to a heartbeat,
and the pacemaker was invented.
Today, more than half a million pacemakers are implanted each and every year.
Not bad for a mistake.
When I think along these lines,
I wish I could snap my fingers
and make the view of failure change in all of our minds just like that.
But I know we have to start small.
Let me give you an example from my school
that I hope illustrates this approach.
It was our first school-wide STEM day,
and the boys and girls in this 4th-grade class I'll tell you about,
they were trying to build a zip line that would drop a marble onto a target
using a paper cup, paper clips, tape and string.
I watched as the boys and girls built their contraptions,
and after each miss, they would huddle together,
make a change or two, and then try again.
When Sofia's group failed for the fourth time,
she turned to me and said,
"Mr. Peters, hashtag, the struggle is real."
(Laughter)
I love that sentiment because it shows me
that Sofie and her classmates were never at the end of a failed experiment.
Rather, they went in the midst of ongoing struggle.
They never felt defeated or demeaned because they couldn't hit their target.
They were motivated and inspired to keep on going with the challenge.
We need to be at the forefront
of creating these types of opportunities for our students.
The sooner they experience and learn from their own failures,
the sooner we will have students
and individuals capable of overcoming any obstacle in their way
and handling any adversity that's thrown in front of them.
I wish I had a classic Hollywood happy ending for you
about Sofia and her group's efforts,
but that's just not the case.
Try as they might, they just couldn't hit that red and white target.
I lost track of time,
I lost track of how many attempts they made that day,
and through it all, they didn't approach anything near success.
By every accepted definition, they had failed.
However, there is hope, because before I left class that day,
I watched as Sofia and her group approached their teacher,
begging to give up the recess time the next day.
These boys and girls were willing to give up their own free time
to give the challenge another shot.
If that's not the definition of success, then I don't know what is.
There are many ways that we can provide
these types of opportunities for our students,
but the most important aspect of all is the attitude with which we,
the adults and the educators approach failure.
At my school, I talk to my teachers about this concept,
and ask them to go back to the class, and to celebrate, share, and learn
from their failures and their students' failures.
Our teachers and students need the freedom to be fearless risk-takers.
Too often, needed change in schools, it's hampered by a lack of money,
supplies and resources that are not always easily accessible.
But this change doesn't require any of that.
It simply requires to change both here and here,
how you think and how you feel about failure.
The other great thing about this change is that,
while we can celebrate failure on a STEM day,
it doesn't matter if you're in a 3rd-grade math class,
or a high-school history class,
or at master's level course at the university,
failure can and must be celebrated, learned from, shared
each and every day in each and every class.
And we start thinking along those lines.
We need to start incorporating the word "yet" into our vocabulary,
both with our students and with ourselves,
and with their goals and with our goals,
as in, "You did not meet that objective yet,
but with effort and analysis, thought and commitment,
you can overcome any obstacle and ultimately find success."
I wish I could stand up in front of you
and say, "I really hope for your success,
and I want to hand the world off to you."
But that's just not the case, because I want you to know struggle.
I want you to experience the frustration of not solving your problem,
or creating your idea on the first try,
or the second try,
or even the fourteenth try.
I want each and every one of you to fail.
Fail magnificently. Fail spectacularly.
Fail gloriously, mind-blowingly, amazingly.
Failure is not only an option;
failure is a necessity so that you may succeed.
Thank you.
(Applause)