A Message from Head of School Jodi Grass

Can we stand back, do nothing, and watch our children fail?

Failure is not separate from learning. When a child fails, something essential happens – which we see if we are attentive. In this world of comparison, failure can turn into shame. We live in a culture that idolizes success and recoils at failure. This conditioning can seep into how we raise and educate our children. We may feel compelled to protect them, correct them, and shield them from disappointment, mistaking comfort for care.

When a child fails, it offers an opportunity for something sacred to occur. Not the polished version of life, but life as it is: uncertain, complex, and at times, painful. To deny them this experience is to deny them the chance to grow. When we rush in to rescue a child from failure, we reinforce that failure is something to fear. We teach them not to explore but to perform – not to question, but to comply.

But if we hold space, quietly and attentively, a deeper intelligence may emerge – not from instruction, but from self-awareness. Letting children fail – with compassion and without shame – may be one of the most radical, healthy acts we can offer in a success-obsessed culture.

When children fail and are allowed to feel – regret, frustration, embarrassment – we must not rush to numb these feelings. They are the soil from which resilience and wholeheartedness grow. But this is only possible when shame is absent. When failure is met with curiosity instead of criticism, the child does not internalize the failure as “I am bad,” but recognizes, “I tried and I learned.” This is the difference between shame and growth.

Positive psychology, which focuses not on what’s wrong but on what helps people thrive, reinforces that resilience, grit, optimism, and meaning-making are not inherited traits; they are built through experience – especially hard experience. Carol Dweck’s work on the growth mindset shows that when children believe ability can be developed, they interpret failure as a step toward mastery, not a statement about their worth.

Martin Seligman’s research into learned optimism also teaches us that children who are encouraged to interpret setbacks as temporary, specific, and changeable rather than permanent, pervasive, and personal are more likely to bounce back and flourish. These are deeply empowering beliefs – but they are only learned when children are given the freedom to fail and the tools to reflect.

Letting children fail does not mean letting them fall without support. It means resisting the urge to fix, to protect, to manage the outcome. It means trusting the child’s capacity to learn from the world directly.

This takes courage on our part. We must sit with our own discomfort – our need to be needed, our fear of judgment, our silent wish to control the narrative. Imagine a school, a family, a culture where failure is not a problem, but a signal of growth. Where mistakes are not met with disappointment, but with questions like, What did you learn? What would you do differently? How did this experience change you?

In such an environment, children are not performing – they are becoming. And this, as Krishnamurti points out, is the true purpose of education – not to mold the child to fit society, but to free the child to meet life in wholeness.