Many young Australians are being taught to accept failure

It’s about forging a living in our harsh environment, whilst successfully raising six Akubra-wearing strong young Aussies.

This image was solidified by the efforts of the Gallipoli soldiers and the diggers on the Kokoda trail. But is it still relevant today?

The global perception of what it meant to be Australian was always based on a myth, but it put many backsides on cinema seats and encouraged many tourists to come to our shores.

Following the successful advertising campaign that featured a talented former rigger on the harbour bridge, we were all putting a shrimp on the barbie and enjoying the great outdoors.

The reality is most Australians live within 200 kilometres of the coast and within large urban centres. Indeed, we are one of the most urbanised nations on earth. There’s not much room for your horse and cattle in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.

The image of Australians (and maybe it was true during one snapshot in history) is strong-minded people who work hard to overcome the challenges the world creates.

Unfortunately, in my 33-year teaching career I have seen an increasing proportion of our young people taught to accept failure, through no fault of their own, and a multimillion-dollar industry developed around this concept.

I have seen the development and the reinforcement of the blame culture; the innate desire to succeed that should be in all children has been replaced by a multitude of excuses in some to justify their own failure.

These kids are conditioned to use a perceived or an experienced tough childhood, a disability, or membership of a minority group as an excuse for not reaching their potential.

The justification for failure is unfortunately ingrained in their self-concept even before anyone has even asked them to succeed.  

Our society’s desire to be politically correct has created a vacuum of personal responsibility. Many times throughout my career I have delt with a young person claiming racism, bullying, discrimination etc, but they cannot tell me what these concepts mean.

They have, however, grown up in an environment that tells them that ‘this is what you will suffer’, and sadly, ‘this is the excuse for your failure’.

This notion is instilled in the child before they interact fully in society.

The obvious question is, why is this occurring? Children do not set the agenda; it is always adults.

Whilst it is career suicide in our sanitised world to acknowledge it, I believe some parents either consciously or sub-consciously want failure for their child because a successful child exposes their personal weaknesses and challenges them to improve themselves.

The comment ‘do not get too far ahead of yourself’ to children, can actually mean ‘do not get too far ahead of me’.

I see this play out every day with some parents in our schools, via passive acceptance of absenteeism, failure to engage in the educational process or in its extreme, parents who develop a dependence on their child’s failure because it gives them a purpose and function in their life.

There’s the parent that insists on a meeting to discuss their child’s problems, but within two minutes only wants to tell me how difficult the school is being and how difficult I am.

There is an industry set up around the blame culture. Principals every day receive emails from individuals or companies offering help to improve children's wellbeing. What does this mean? Wellbeing is so subjective, difficult to measure and contextual.

Just think about an academic in Sydney who plans to use a generic program that they have developed and commercialised out in the central west.  

I often think maybe the idea of ‘out-of-control kids’ is generated by an industry that feeds on the movement of parental responsibility from the home to institutions such as schools. Maybe the focus of school behaviour intervention should be on parents rather than children.

Any form of discrimination cannot be tolerated. Every organisation has the responsibility to eliminate it now and into the future. We also should acknowledge the horrific history of racism and systematic discrimination in this country.

What I am highlighting is the damage that comes from almost programming our children to hate the world.

When children arrive at school with the idea that they are going to struggle because of their race, socio economic status, religion or otherwise, we take away the gift of innocence, wonder and their ability to discover what Louis Armstrong described as a wonderful world.