Permission to Fail

Some learners are reluctant to read and write, in which there seems to be a connection to schooling – maybe even an intimate relationship. Students not wanting to be in school or avidly hating the thought of school can be related to the school structure itself, not a problem with the student’s learning ability. The common thought is that students don’t do well or don’t read or write is because they are lazy or just aren’t smart enough, which is very problematic. Everyone has the ability to learn and wants to learn; however, if the school (and at the micro level the teacher) doesn’t foster a positive active learning environment in which the students are demanded that they succeed they are then giving students permission to fail – which is a passive learning environment. Passively the teacher or school doesn’t need to expend energy to teach students and consequently they are knowingly/unknowingly being given permission to fail.

In “The Skin that we Speak” by Lisa Delpit, this idea of “giving students permission to fail” is outlined in the chapter, “I ain’t writin’ nutten’: Permissions to fail and demands to succeed in urban classrooms” by Gloria J. Ladson-Billings, in which a student was actively refusing to read or write and continually the teachers would passively allow her to do so and would say “Okay, maybe you’ll feel like writing tomorrow”. This is what I understand to be passive instruction, the teachers didn’t actively demand that the student complete the work which would be a challenge and would require more from the teacher. Ultimately, this particular student was avoiding the work because she wasn’t able to read and had limited phonemic awareness, and of course, the teachers allowing her to continually avoid the work was not helping the problems that she had. Why this is so critically important to recognize as a teacher is because as this student continues through school her problems will get worse and will go unaddressed and unfortunately this student may give up on school, so to speak. This is an act of pushing students out whether it is knowingly or unknowingly by the schools, which again is important to recognize and understand.

Students shouldn’t “be given permission to fail”. However it happens and, again, teachers need to be “active” in teaching – they need to expend energy in order to get a result, and that result is learning. Teaching isn’t “passive”, because teaching passively leads to a lack of student learning and gives students permission to fail (which are also results, however undesired results).

Note: I used active and passive to explain teaching methods – active, in a biological sense, requires the use of energy to get a result and passive requires no energy.