Failure, Fighting and Pedagogy

Abstract

Noticing that I had developed a tendency to beat myself for failing to meet what I now know are rigid, uncompromising criteria for self-expression in school subjects such as drama and sport, I decided to throw myself into the world of boxing in a bid to recapture my confidence as preparation for university. What I found was very surprising: contra to what one might expect of a competitive boxing environment, failures were neither negated nor treated with hostility. Instead, failures were presented as something to be explored and discussed openly and critically as a means to self-reflection, acceptance and developing personal style – qualities I wrongly assumed would be encouraged at school and in academia. Drawing from my personal experience of education, boxing and what I consider as the valuable art of distraction, this paper suggests that we look again at the role of failure in pedagogy in order to address the narrow and sometimes stagnant guidelines we have developed within our learning cultures. In other words, I am suggesting that we position failure as a way to both confront and antagonise the notions and practices we have inherited for training bodies and minds to simply embody and repeat received knowledge from one generation to the next. Failure, I have found, can inspire alternative ways of collaboration, reflection and creative practice wherein acknowledging failure is essential for fighters/students to discover a freedom of expression that allows them to navigate and share their learning experiences with confidence and negotiate their environment on individual terms.

Notes

1 Mary Overlie created the Six Viewpoints and continued to develop them in her role as director at the Experimental Theatre Wing, Tisch School of the Arts, New York. This method of creating and studying theatre was apprehended by directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau and was published as an extended practical guide to Overlie’s work in their 2006 book entitled The Viewpoints Book: A practical guide to viewpoints and composition. You can read about Overlie’s original theory and practice, and the exercise I refer to in Overlie’s 2016 book Standing in Space: The six viewpoints theory & practice. I run this exercise from memory of working with Mary Overlie during a Summer School at Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance in the South London suburb of Sidcup in July 2017.

2 Lyn Gardner addresses the idea of artists and creative graduates inhabiting two worlds in her article ‘Don’t be ashamed of your day job, you can be a waiter and an artist’ (2018). Gardner suggests that ‘working in the real world can be important for artists at any stage’ – which is something I have recently noticed with my own students who tend to be working long hours in order to support their studies. The exercise I have mentioned is intended to ask students to think about the tensions and creative possibilities of combining and exploring these two worlds together – as I am only now beginning to do with boxing and performance.