Failure: The Concept in English & Hebrew
Not everyone succeeds, especially at first. What we call our efforts matters.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the Jewish cultural trait of argumentation and discord: that we as a people and as a religion support the possibility of multiple ways of looking at an issue. We enjoy discussing them (sometimes arguing vociferously) and eventually either coming to an agreement or agreeing to disagree.i
Another cultural trait, this one linguistic, relates to the huge difference between the English, failure and the Hebrew כשל . Disclaimer: these are my observations, not an authoritative take on this issue.
One tenet of Judaism is that one can almost always correct a mistake or learn something new and different that will bring about a different outcome. The language reflects this. The meaning of the Hebrew word commonly translated as failure, כשל, is a mistake that cannot be corrected. It is a very strong word that is not used frequently,ii including (or especially) in an educational sense. On the other hand, words such as טעות (ta'ut) and שגיאה (shagiah), as well as several others built on the root שג (shg), refer to mistakes or errors which can be corrected. These are the words used in Hebrew sayings about learning.
Failure in English has no close synonym. The Merriam-Webster On-Line Thesaurus offers these usages of the word: negligence, defeat, disaster, shortage, and bankruptcy.iii The opposite of failure is success. With no alternative, failure is often used in relation to education. One fails an exam even though one might be able to retake it; Patty has failed to learn the times tables. Even 7-year-olds know that "F" stands for failure. To children and adults alike, failing means "Sorry, kid, you don't cut it. Can't do it. Done. Forever an ignoramus, forever a failure, forever a loser."
There are ways around this issue. In English, the end of the sentence has more power than the beginning, so it should stress the point the author wants to make. Example:
Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb, but it took him 1000 failed attempts.
Thomas Edison persevered through 1000 unsuccessful attempts until he invented the incandescent light bulb.
Negative words such as but, never, does not, and cannot tend to stand out in a reader's mind more than whatever comes after. When can be more positive than if; it suggests a probability, whereas if suggests just a possibility.
Encouraging Expressions
Here are some popular English expressions meant to be encouraging and uplifting. Seven out of the ten are negative:
"You can't let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you."--Barack Obama
"Failure is a success if we learn from it."--Malcolm Forbes
"There is no failure. Only feedback." --Robert Allen
"It is fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure."--Bill Gates
"You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing."--Stella Adler
"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."--Henry Ford
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."--Albert Einstein
"Mistakes are the stairs we climb to reach success."--Tim Fargo
"It's okay to make mistakes. Mistakes are our teachers--they help us to learn."--John Bradshaw
"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."--Oscar Wilde
The popular Hebrew-language sayings about learning do not use the word כשל and words related to it, and they end on a positive note. Here are the most popular ones:
Every mistake is a step toward success.
From mistakes we learn, grow, and become stronger.
There is no path without errors--and from them come many things to learn.
Our mistakes teach us the best way.
Mistakes--Learning--Success!
Don't be afraid of mistakes--learn the lessons they contain and move forward.
Here it's okay to make mistakes because that's how we truly learn.
We learn by making mistakes.
Emphasis on the Positive
We Jews are taught to emulate God as best we can. One example appears in II Chronicles 6:7-9, where God shows us to be positive when correcting people:
7 And it was in my father David's heart [the desire] to build a House for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.
8 And the Lord said to David my father; Since it was in your heart to build a House to My name, you did well that it was in your heart.
9 Nevertheless, you shall not build the House, but your son who will come forth out of your loins he shall build the House for My name.
Negative expressions that are meant to be helpful often have the opposite effect. The focus on avoiding failure often leads to students who are paralyzed by anxiety. This can manifest by the student asking to use the restroom whenever a task seems overwhelming, by claiming the work is too boring to do, or by many other (often very creative) means.
Turning the emphasis from the negative to the positive, from failure to mistake and from mistake to future success can overcome perfectionism. Simply finding a positive saying and posting it in a classroom or making it a family saying can make a big difference. Here is the sign from my sewing classroom in the USA:
Whenever a student was paralyzed by anxiety or frustrated by having messed up, I would point to the sign. She would read it a time or two, sigh deeply, let her shoulders drop, try again, and complete her task successfully.
Turning English Around
How can you switch your meant-to-be-positive-but-not comments to ones that are truly positive? Choose positive words and put the desired result at the end. Here are three of the English statements from above, rewritten to express the ideas positively.
"Failure is a success if we learn from it." This quote from Malcolm Forbes can be rewritten as: When we learn from our mistakes, we will succeed.
Robert Allen said, "There is no failure. Only feedback." This could be rewritten: Turn your mistakes into successes by learning from them.
"It is fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure," according to Bill Gates. It could be rewritten, Learning from our mistakes creates opportunities to celebrate our successes.
Conclusion
Focusing on learning from mistakes, rather than on our failures, can make a huge difference to learners and to the way we handle mistakes, often serious, that we make in our adult lives. Coupled with the related ability to hear and accept opposing views, these two factors have a lot to do with Jewish success.
i Very occasionally, an argument ends with a major schism. One example occurred at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple and the beginnings of Christianity: the argument between the Sadducees and Pharisees. Another is the rift between Orthodoxy today and the Jewish Reform movement, the philosophical if not the organizational home of liberal Jews. This is the group that has supported every Progressive issue and that actively criticizes Israel from the USA. But these major philosophical and theological differences, while very destructive, are few in number.
The New Testament has a lot to say about the Sadducee-Pharisee argument; the Jewish viewpoint can be found at https://www.chabad.or/library/article_cdo/aid/953558/jewish/The-Four-Factions.htm and https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid-2832612/jewish/Pharisees-and-Sadducees-Jewish-Factions-During-the-Hasmonean-period.htm .
ii Unfortunately, on-line translation apps such as Google Translate often use כשל where other words would be more appropriate, using it in the softer uses of "failure" in English, weakening its original meaning.
I tink ya spilled sef talk rong berow.
Naow i nid Two c wut self tak i Giv maiyself wen i mayke a mizsteak.