From Robert Willis, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Your review of the exhibition Flop: 13 stories of failure reminded me of finding Stephen Pile's wonderful 1979 tome The Book of Heroic Failures (9 November, p 31). Its guiding principle was that anyone can succeed, but it takes genius to fail in spectacular ways. The notion that great success can come from great failure sparks much discussion among educators. Our educational systems fail, at all levels, to teach students how to fail and about the resilience to learn and recover from failure.
It is great that our pedagogy emphasises students' success. But it seemingly does so at a cost: the creation of learners who are less tolerant of risk and, therefore, of innovation. We need more work on the joys of failure.
