How Children Fail

"This is a book written by a schoolteacher back in the 1960s. It’s a really interesting book. It forces the reader to consider the unintended consequences of what we do in classrooms, including testing, and what we subject students to. One of the things that John Holt talks about is how children can learn to game the system, because they begin to realise what it will take to do well in school. So they can “fake” doing well, but that doesn’t mean they’re learning. They’re just learning to do well in the system, and the system rewards certain ways of thinking, certain ways of behaving, certain ways of communicating. That can actually turn children off the real learning that we need them to do. “I think there is virtue in understanding why there is a segment of the population that is against testing. ” The reason I think this is an important book for testing is because I think that we should, as testing specialists, be very aware of what the unintended consequences might be of the tests that we administer to children and frankly all learners. What are they really learning? What is the evidence that they are truly learning content or to think deeply? Or are they simply showing us what it is we want them to show us now but will soon forget as meaningless later? So they’re showing us what they know, but what might be the consequences or the unintended consequences of the way that we do it? Yes, he would. So this is just my opinion, but I think there is virtue in understanding why there is a segment of the population that is against testing. There is value for testing specialists, like myself, to understand their perspective because I think we have a lot to learn. That perspective is highlighting the things that tests might do that is actually not very good. How can we improve on that? Yes. And you know what I love about so many of the quotes from that book is that they also apply to adults. I’m a university professor, and I’m here in this great institution of higher learning. I love to learn, but even I don’t want to be taught, necessarily."

"This was a revolutionary book. In it John Holt talks about why students turn off their minds, why even students from privileged backgrounds and schools become intellectually numb. Why do they fail? His answer is because they’re afraid. They’re afraid of disappointing people. They’re afraid of being wrong. Then he asks: Why does this happen? Because people and schools sit in judgement of them. The reason I love this book is that this fear of failing, disappointing and being wrong is at the core of the “fixed mindset”. I read this book in graduate school and it really helped set me on my path. It fed my desire to discover the psychology behind vulnerability and its opposite, resilience. I read this book again many years later, and I realised that Holt had redefined intelligence itself. Intelligence for him was not about the kinds of abilities we measure or about school achievement. Intelligence for him was a set of attitudes, a way of approaching challenges. Intelligent people are those who grapple boldly with challenges, people who look at their mistakes and learn from them. He was equating intelligence with a growth mindset. Failure is important to understand because success involves repeated setbacks. If you don’t know how to welcome failure, grapple with it and ultimately overcome it, you’re not going to develop your potential to the fullest. I became fascinated with failure because I confess I had more of a fixed mindset early on. I often wondered: Why are some people able to roll more easily with the punches and not see setbacks as a statement about their abilities? When I first started my research I saw these kids – we would give them problems they couldn’t solve and they would say things like “I love a challenge” or “Mistakes are our friends”. I knew that they had a wisdom I had yet to achieve. I wanted to understand their mindset and figure out how I could bottle it and distribute it to more people."