Failing well is a skill. Letting girls do it gives them critical practice coping with a negative experience. It also gives them the opportunity to develop a kind of confidence and resilience that can only be forged in times of challenge.
Interpretation
Learning to fail productively helps build resilience and confidence, particularly in young girls.
This quote emphasizes the importance of allowing young girls to experience failure as it equips them with necessary life skills. Facing challenges and setbacks enables them to develop resilience, confidence, and the ability to cope with adversity, ultimately preparing them for future obstacles. In this sense, failure is not just a negative experience but a valuable opportunity for growth.
In practice
In a workshop on building resilience, I would quote this to emphasize the value of learning from failure.
You don't learn how to say 'hey, I have a problem,' but you also don't learn how to hear it. There's a total breakdown of how females talk to one another. It's very disconcerting for leadership because it means you don't talk to each other; you talk about each other.
All around me, I see girls forced to become rat racers in the College Application Industrial Complex, the subculture where students must craft themselves into the perfect specimens for college admission and often lose their authenticity, love of learning, and sense of self in the process.
When I did the original research for 'Odd Girl Out,' I asked every bullied girl I interviewed to tell me what she needed most from her family. The answer truly surprised me. It wasn't having the best solutions, calling the school, or trying to act like everything was okay. It was empathy.
The danger of lectures is that they create the illusion of teaching for teachers, and the illusion of learning for learners.
Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.
A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
Widening the talent pipeline sufficiently will require a generational commitment to teaching math and science, providing technical training, and mentoring young people of all backgrounds so they understand the full range of possibilities that a career in technology affords.
Perhaps I could best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of entering a dark mansion. You go into the first room and it's dark, completely dark. You stumble around, bumping into the furniture. Gradually, you learn where each piece of furniture is. And finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch and turn it on. Suddenly, it's all illuminated and you can see exactly where you were. Then you enter the next dark room.
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