Teaching failure may be best lesson for the future

Disgraced ex-New York Times reporter Jayson Blair talking to college students about journalistic ethics?

What’s next? The former head of Lehman Brothers on financial risk management?

Such was the blogosphere’s snarky tone last week when Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., announced that Mr. Blair would speak Friday at a journalism conference there.

But if the cheap irony of a famous fabulist lecturing on ethics was too much to resist, perhaps it could also prompt colleges to think more seriously about something they often shy away from: the value of exposing students to, and preparing them for, failure.

For some people, like Mr. Blair, failure is spectacular and public. For others, it’s just falling short of expectations - in their careers or personal lives.

You won’t find many examples of either type among the guest-speaker announcements of college bulletins. Instead, you’ll find a parade of winners - titans of the arts and commerce and politics, many of them alumni, returning triumphantly to campus to inspire the next generation (and, implicitly, to demonstrate to customers the college is worth up to $50,000 a year).

They may well talk about past failures on their eventual path to success. Rarely is the podium held by someone who just failed.

That’s understandable - but too bad. Teachers say failure is something so-called Generation Y students want to hear more about.

“They are very concerned with failure,” said Rich Honack, a lecturer at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and an expert in generational cultures. Today’s 20-somethings “have always succeeded. They’ve always gotten trophies when they go out for a sports team. They’ve always gotten A’s. Their parents have told them be the best and protected them from failure.”

In a way that makes failure all the more terrifying.

Visitors to Kellogg, a top-tier business school, often are grilled about the times they messed up, Mr. Honack said. When former General Electric Chief Executive Officer Jack Welch talked to students, they were especially curious how his career recovered after, as a young chemical engineer, he blew the roof off a factory and almost got fired.

Of course, Mr. Welch went on to become one of the most successful CEOs ever. Mr. Honack couldn’t think of any outright failures who’d spoken lately on campus.

Mr. Blair perhaps can help students understand better the pressures that they will feel trying to break into the highly competitive news business.

“There is always going to be pressure to cut corners,” said Edward Wasserman, the journalism professor who invited Mr. Blair to Washington and Lee. “I suspect what we’re going to find is that he got where he was through half-steps, small steps, rather than a huge leap into completely impermissible behavior.”

There are corners of collegiate life where it’s impossible to hide from failure. In one such corner, success inevitably comes, on average, just half the time - college sports.

Story Continues →