The Benefits of Failure

In watching Will Wright's TED talk, he mentioned something that I think many people today don't agree with or don't see the importance of. Several times he mentioned "failure space." I personally think failure is one of the most important things in learning; however, today's teaching scares so many kids away from failure. I think the embracing what you can learn from failure is what makes great scientists, creators, and people in general. As someone who grew up with legos and Lincoln Logs, I was free to create structures and explore what I later came to know as physics and engineering. The ability to make something and having it come crashing down or shoot it with a nerf gun ended up being widely educational. While my kids will definitely have pounds of legos, I found it interesting to see that game designers are still thinking about failure spaces in games like the Sims and other simulators.