Recently, I rewatched my favorite film in the series, The Empire Strikes Back. Besides my appreciation of the film’s perfect structure, I believe the story-line that the main character Luke Skywalker experiences in the film has much to teach us educators.
In the film, Luke undergoes training in the ways of the Force under the tutelage of the ancient master, Yoda. Eventually, he is destined to face his nemesis Darth Vader but he must first make himself into a true Jedi warrior. The film spends much time on Luke’s successes and failures in this training with Yoda passing on many words of wisdom to his young student.
When faced with the dilemma between leaving to save his friends who he has foreseen through the Force are in danger or staying to finish his training, Luke chooses the “easy path” to leave. Both Yoda and Luke’s mentor Obi Wan know this is the wrong path. They warn Luke against this decision. Yet when they realize that Luke is dead set on leaving, they change their tone giving Luke parting words of encouragement knowing that Luke has embarked on a journey of certain defeat.
What makes the film unique is that it does not take the easy path. Luke is in fact defeated by Vader. In their duel, Vader confronts Luke with one of the greatest cinematic reveals in history. But Luke survives. Only in the next film, the final in the trilogy, will Luke prevail. (With help from a surprising source.)
The exchange between Luke and his teachers gives us much insight into our role as parents, mentors, and educators. Sometimes we know that our children or students are making a poor decision. Do we let them? Our instinct in this age of helicopter parenting and the highly competitive college admissions process is to step in. Don’t let them make a mistake. It might have dire consequences on the future.
But in my own life I have realized that anything I value that I have learned has only happened after I first messed up, sometimes many times. Without risk, there is no reward.
As Elisha Wiesel describes his father Eli Wiesel's response to his rebellious years, sometimes we have to let our children and our students "Just be."
But too often our students, especially the highest achieving ones, are trained to avoid risk at all costs. I have a confession to make. Often I prefer NOT to teach the highest honors tracks because I find these students spend so much time trying to figure out how to get an A that they remove the risk taking which leads to the joy and creativity of the learning process.
When I was at the recent ISTE Conference, I attended a wonderful lecture on the Maker Mindset by Mark Schreiber, a research fellow at Stanford’s FabLearn. Mark described the importance to train our students to take risks. This is obvious when it comes to Making. How many iterations did it take to design the iPhone? But not the norm in the more “conventional” subjects where too often the goal is not to create but to get the A at all costs. Students who follow this path might become successful at school but too often they are unsuccessful at life. They have never learned to face failure and utilize their mistakes to succeed in the future.
Perhaps, Luke’s risk taking, his decision to face his nemesis in a situation of certain defeat, was the only way he could grow into the Jedi Master he ultimately becomes.
How can we train all of our students to embrace failure as their path to grow into mastery?
This is a question each of us as educators grapple with every day.
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