Tuesday, July 19, 2011

(a SAT essay) (Q) The novelist John Hersey wrote, “Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education.” What are your thoughts on the idea that failure is necessary for education to take place?



(397 words)
- An english proverb goes-“learn from your mistakes.” It is also said that-“learn from others mistake because you cannot possibly make all the mistakes by yourself.” This delineates how important mistakes or simply failure is in our lives. Thus, failure is a lifelong teacher and without it, education cannot take place.

Failure is a critical pre-requisite for the ability to learn. It is strenuous for a child to learn the alphabets initially. After that, it is even harder for him to assemble them into words and then sentences. Obviously, the child fails in the beginning. It takes him months and even years to learn that, and this is the vivid example of failure in the beginning of education. Failure drives us to learn, points our mistakes and loopholes, which makes our learning process effective.

The examples of the most successful people in the world are also the examples of the greatest failures. Thomas Edison was a great American inventor, and without him, we would be living in a dark. He failed more than one thousand times and ultimately came up with a light bulb. He was really a scanty student and was told to discontinue his formal education by his teachers. The story is exactly similar for Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton as well. Edition had said ‘I did not fail but found ten thousand ways that did not work.’ This is how successful people turned their failures into stepping-stones. Every scientist knows that experiment is never truly a failure; it is a lesson that teaches us what not to do and pushes us to a different approach.

A person who has failed several times has a true value of what he has learned. I have a great experience while practicing math. When I will be able to solve a problem after several hours of attempts I really feel good but I do not feel that way, when I solve it in my first attempt.

In a nutshell, failure inspires us to learn and achieve highest goals. If a mistake is made, one never tries to repeat it and this perception is the first step towards our journey to success. Not everybody is born with all the skills required to survive. Hence, failure is inexorable no matter what we do, But, the matter of fact is failing is not losing; it is just a wonderful opportunity to learn.