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THOUGHTS ABOUT FAILURE
Students fear failure. Especially Public Failure. While learning music, failure is a big part of the process that helps stimulate and cement learning of musical concepts and elements such as pitch, intonation, rhythmic accuracy, balance and blend. Failure always precedes learning. When a note is played wrong (hopefully with confidence), a mental adjustment is made and the correct fingering is then learned.
Failure is an important aspect of all that we do in Education and (again) is the Mother of learning. Fixating on 'right answers' is enormously deceiving to students and it builds reticence and fear which, ultimately, paralyzes students from attempting answers (for fear of failure). When students learn the lesson of "right", unspoken peer pressure accumulates and promotes silence (for fear of ridicule). On and on it goes.
Increasingly, I believe the best answer a teacher can ever give to a student is "I don't know". The best possible follow up.."What do you think?".
Here are some useful quotes about failure:
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
-Benjamin Franklin
Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.
-Winston Churchill
Failure is simple the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
-Henry Ford
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