Failure-fearing culture

Life After School is a bi-monthly podcast created by Jessa. You can find more about Jessa by reading her daily blog at jessa.blog.

To submit a question, go to jessa.blog/podcast. To see the show notes, please visit jessa.blog/show-notes.

School’s industrial, scaled-up, measurable structure means that fear must be used to keep the masses in line. There’s no other way to get hundreds or thousands of kids to comply, to process that many bodies, en masse, without simultaneous coordination.

And the flip side of this fear and conformity must be that passion will be destroyed. There’s no room for someone who wants to go faster, or someone who wants to do something else, or someone who cares about a particular issue. Move on. Write it in your notes; there will be a test later. A multiple-choice test.

from the manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams: What is School For?

And the flip side of this fear and conformity must be that passion will be destroyed.
Stop Stealing Dreams: What is School For?

You can download the manifesto Seth Godin wrote in response to the provocative question, “What is school for?“. To download, just press this.

Podcast highlights:

Fast forward when you started going to school, you learned that getting wrong in front of the class risk you being laughed at.

We do not want to be in the spotlight, especially when it is for ridicule.

Most of the time, our fear of failure is what exactly keeps us from succeeding in life. And to fail is only painful if you think that it is already the end.
Take the risk of being laughed at for a moment if it means that you will learn how to become better at what you intend to do.

Take the risk even if you will not get it right the first time if it means knowing what works the next time.

Risk-taking can be learned. Bravery can be developed. All these would materialize if you will just surround yourself with the right people and immerse yourself in an environment that rewards bravery, not punishing it.
Maybe you are afraid because you fear the responsibility of owning up to your failure. That instead of taking responsibility to the decisions you made, it’s way easier to blame somebody else.
Remember, if you think what you’re doing is worth pursuing, don’t quit when you feel fail. Because only when you learn to get back up again will you see the fruit of your labor.