This essay was written by me in response to Michael Goodwin's video on the freedom to fail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJLCbv5K0WU
MAKING THE NEXT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE
By: Karishma Bhatia
At the beginning of all time, God created man and God created woman. And then in 1937, God placed on earth his greatest creation yet: the Chocolate Chip Cookie. Well actually, he didn’t; a young woman named Ruth Graves Wakefield from the Toll House Restaurant in Massachusetts did when she accidentally substituted pieces of Nestle© chocolate for her regular baker’s chocolate. By not following the recipe, Ruth Wakefield brought into this world one of the most revered foods ever. And as I enjoy this soft scrumptious serving of deliciousness during my aggravatingly short lunch period, I am brought to wonder “why? Why can my education not be more like the invention of chocolate chip cookies?” Today, when I look at my education, I don’t feel that it is my right to fail that I have lost. Rather, I feel as though it is my right to embrace and enjoy failure that has been lost.
It has been said that “the greatest barrier to success is the failure to try.” Our educational system does often limit exposure to failure through social promotion. However, suddenly handing society the right to fail is no way to eradicate the U.S.’s educational crisis. Why must we paint the ideas of success and failure in black and white? Why can both ideas not coexist – why can they not both be promoted? Failure is often misunderstood by society. It is associated with the idea of one miserably falling on his face, learning a lesson, picking oneself up and walking in the right direction. But must every direction be labeled right and wrong? Can one not simply create a new direction? In our country, so much importance is given to success that most fear trying and failing. There is no reward for failing, and there is no reward for trying - it is only success that is promoted, which is why even professionals (doctors, businessmen - teachers even) in our country have stooped so low as to cheat. Ask yourself, how is an enthusiastic, young teacher earning a meager salary supposed to see the benefits of failure in trying a new teaching method when her job is on the line? The consequences of trying are greater than the rewards - so why even make an attempt? The truth is, the right to failure is not even seen as a right by most Americans - it's seen as a sentence.
Life is often referred to as a journey – we must all follow paths to our destinies. But it is those of us who forge our own paths - those of us who dare to fail - that are ultimately successful. The path to success does not lie simply in granting a population the right to fail by making examinations more difficult or by making schools more strict - it lies in encouraging young minds to wonder, to make mistakes, to embrace failure, because the purpose of failure should never be to steer one away from what is wrong – the purpose of failure is to allow for discovery – to make way for the creation of new thoughts and notions.
Today, as an adolescent who has 13 of experience in the American educational system, I’m asking not for someone to tell me that failure is my right. I am asking to be taught to want this right. I am asking to be inspired to fight for this right. And I'm asking that I be able to look to the leaders of my country and know that failure is important and okay. But today, when I look at how my country is dealing with its educational system failure, I wonder, why is the first society to place man on the moon looking at China and Japan for a way to end its educational crisis? Why must we look at our failure to educate our children as an unsuccessful venture? And why should the idea of fashioning a new system of education scare us? Let’s make a couple of mistakes. Let us fail miserably and learn, or fail miserably and succeed. Come on America – let’s make the next Chocolate Chip Cookie!
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