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Finland celebrated its first annual Day for Failure in 2010. I heard of this seemingly odd holiday earlier this year at the Education Institute of Hawaii’s second annual Hawaii School Empowerment Conference, where Pasi Sahlberg was a guest speaker. (A video of his speech is below.)

I was excited at the prospect of seeing him at the Hawaii Convention Center because I’d been interested in his writings and speeches for years. For those of you who haven’t heard, Finland’s public education system has been heralded as an enormous success for the past decade or so. Sahlberg was director general of the Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation at Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture when I first became aware of him.

These days, one of the many things he does is travel internationally to spread the gospel of common-sense approaches to improving public education. You can read his impressive bio in the “CV & Writings” tab on

Sahlberg’s home page features some great aphorisms, among them:

• Only half of what you hear is true. Learning is to discover that and then to ignore the rest.
• Reforming schools is a complex, slow process. To rush it is to ruin it.
• Systems excellence in education requires that the entire society perform harmoniously.
• The worst enemy of curiosity is standardization.

That’s powerful, succinct guidance from which Hawaii can benefit enormously. That’s a big if. A prophetic Civil Beat Hawaii Storytellers podcast comes to mind.

Former Civil Beat staffer Gene Park wryly . At 5:53 into the podcast comes Reason #4: “Hawaii is always waiting for permission. … Every time I look into politics, there is some kind of committee going on and they always need some kind of research and they need to see what happens in Denver or California. … Why can’t Hawaii just be a leader and just like do �ٳ󾱲Բ���?”

Park was channeling my thoughts. Why is Hawaii so reluctant to take the lead and do what’s best for Hawaii? Why always look elsewhere for solutions? Guidance is good, but at some point any guidance that doesn’t come from Hawaii won’t be a perfect fit.

Plus, I’ve been frustrated by the models the Hawaii Department of Education chooses, like California or Las Vegas — low performers in education, rather than top performers like Massachusetts or Finland. This is like learning to paint by copying mediocre art rather than the works of masters.

So we had one of the greatest thinkers in education come and speak to us in January. Are we following his advice? Not yet. We are not even close to celebrating a Day for Failure. This fabulous idea, advice from a master, seems to disappear into a black hole even though it’s something that would benefit all of Hawaii schools, families and workplaces.

Culture Of Fear, Punishment And Secrecy

Imagine what life would be like in Hawaii if we changed the culture so that we embrace being human, learn from mistakes and keep working on improving ourselves, rather than attacking and punishing people for being human and making mistakes. This inevitably forces people to hide mistakes, not admit anything, keep secrets and let fear fester. In such environments, people get hurt, we don’t advance and little changes.

Hawaii needs the Day for Failure like someone with malaria needs quinine. A disease exists and there is medicine that can help. The disease in Hawaii is the culture of fear, punishment and secrecy that stifles creative problem solving in practically every facet of our lives.

Sahlberg gave the that he did in Hawaii. I like this version because there’s a transcript available I can easily quote. He talked about the GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) and specifically about one negative influence the GERM has had in the United States, where teachers, students and schools have become afraid to fail. That’s very problematic, he explained, because if you do anything under that kind of fear, you’re not going to be very successful.

It’s difficult to be happy and successful if you are afraid. Many teachers have left the profession because they’re afraid of failing.

Finland is a very different place because the Finns celebrate failure everywhere, most prominently through their annual Day for Failure, which falls on Oct. 13 every year. In every school, university, workplace and family, they spend one day recognizing how important failure is.

He said, “We try to teach, educate our young people to think that it’s not that failure and success are the opposites of one another, as I see in many school systems that you have to avoid failing and you have to succeed. But we teach our people that it’s often so that failure and success are very close to one another — that you fail, and you fail, and you fail, and then you succeed.”

“It’s a very different culture than the culture of fear and a dominance of success.” At this point in the presentation, he urged his audiences to “create the annual day of failure celebrating failure. It’s a fun thing to do because you can do many things that kids really — and teachers — really like. It’s going to change the culture and many things altogether.”

Are we going to take his advice?

How do you change a culture? You have to change the rules, the laws, the policies and then abide by the new rules. You have to educate and inform what the new rules are about and how to follow them. I don’t think anyone can successfully argue that there is not a culture of fear in the DOE that stifles honest approaches to improvement. If we can’t even admit when there’s a problem or we’ve made a mistake, we can’t talk about how to fix it.

We need to stop punishing people for mistakes and create a culture that welcomes the opportunity to talk about mistakes openly again and again and again, until there are rock-solid solutions and such errors become a thing of the past. The Department of Education is a good place to start. Maybe someday, the Day for Failure will become a statewide celebration.

I urge the State of Hawaii Board of Education to enact a policy that requires the DOE to celebrate the now International Day for Failure on Oct. 13. I urge the DOE to bring in the master, Sahlberg, to help guide the DOE in activities for students and employees that we can do in our schools on our Day for Failure — a day that looks toward and helps build a better future.