A positive role for failure in virtue education

Abstract

This article outlines a role for constructive failures in virtue education. Some failures can be catastrophic and push the agent toward vice, but other types of failure can have positive consequences, we’ll call these failures constructive failures, failures that help on the road to virtue. So, while failures are generally appealed to as examples of what to avoid doing, educators may want to actively create conditions that are likely to make their students fail. While failures may involve negative feelings in the short term, constructive failures, although they appear to pose obstacles in the learning process, actually help lead us to our goal, virtue. Crucially, constructive failures give us insights into situations and into ourselves, insights which make it more likely that we will succeed in the ultimate goal of virtue.

Keywords:

• Aristotle
• virtue ethics
• moral education
• character education

Notes

1. The classical paper is Burnyeat, 1980, but see also Sherman, 1989 and Vasiliou, 1996. In particular, on educating for virtue, see Carr & Steutel, 1999; and Kristjansson, 2007.

2. I will be relying on an Aristotelian account of virtue as developed by authors such as Annas, 2011; Hursthouse, 1999; Nussbaum, 1986 amongst others. However, my insights about the value of learning from failure could be equally applicable to other accounts of virtue and flourishing, indeed they are probably of relevance to any account of character development.

3. Aristotle, NE 1106b 35–1107a 1.

4. For an overview of the role of the virtuous agent see Athanassoulis, 2013, ch.5 .

5. For a discussion of recent developments in the literature on the role of the virtuous agent in education see Athanassoulis, forthcoming.

6. For more on phronesis as a skill see Annas, 2011; Dunne, 2009; Russell, 2009.

7. Athanassoulis, 2016, pp.213–214. There are, of course, other accounts of how virtue ethics can respond to situationism in an educational context (see for example Kristjansson, 2007, 2015), but I think that what I have to say is, in broad terms, compatible with them.

8. Aristotle, NE 1106b 33.

9. The archery example also comes from Aristotle, NE Book 2.

10. I am grateful to Struan Whitbread for the Eddie the Eagle example, and to Bill Wringe for the William McGonigal example.

11. R. Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

12. For a general account of character development and the many ways on can fail in the long developmental process see Sherman, 1989.

13. Clifford, 1984, p.109.

14. Clifford, 1984, p. 109.

15. Milgram, 1974, p. 52.

16. Milgram, 1974, p. 196.

17. Milgram, 1974, p. 200.

18. Milgram, 1974, pp. 207–210.

19. Bjork & Bjork, 2011, p. 62.

20. Bye, 2015.

21. Bye, 2015.

22. Schmidt & Bjork, 1992, p. 207.

23. Aristotle NE, 1139b 3.

24. For more on this see for example Sherman, 1997.

25. Ryoo, Bulalacao, Kekelis, McLeod, & Henriquez, 2015.

26. Aristotle, NE Book VI.

27. Milgram, 1974.

28. Isen & Levin, 1972.

29. Haney & Zimbardo, 1977.

30. From psychology see Ross, Lepper, & Hubbard, 1975; and Zimbardo, 2007 and as discussed by philosophers see reference removed for anonymization purposes and Miller, 2015.

31. Beaman, Barnes, Klentz, & McQuirk, 1978.

32. Samuels & Casebeer, 2005, p. 80.

33. Zimbardo, 2007, loc. 4838–4843.

34. Clifford, 1984, p. 112.

35. Klein, 1999, Loc. 1327.

36. Buss, 1989, 1381.

37. Note here that we are no longer relying on the virtuous as a role model. The continent, who at times lapses into incontinence, is a more pertinent and realistic role model.

38. I am very grateful to audiences at the Aretai Centre 1st Annual Conference at the University of Genoa and the Virtue and Moral Cognition Conference at the University of Gdansk for insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am particularly grateful to Arianna Fermani, Alessandra Tanesini and two anonymous referees for the journal for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.