They can't help but reach out to embrace new experiences, the thrill of success and the frustration of failure. With our incremental learning systems designed to stack little successes on top of little successes, we are trying to eliminate failure from the experiences of young people. But it is from failure that we learn fortitude, how to revise and test new hypotheses, how to improve ourselves. What we should do is not try to eliminate failure, but focus our energies on the creation of environments where failure and mistakes are seen as opportunities to grow. So much of our educational system is based on a lack of trust, that if we don't force, coerce and otherwise require young people to participate in a variety of activities then they will never choose to do them on their own.
Failure is seen as an ending, the inability to learn something new, rather than an opportunity.
An irrational fear, young people forever shutting doors on themselves, limiting their choices for the future, shooting themselves in the foot, permeates every decision. The irony of this, in my opinion, is that that is what we do to them when we make them blindly attend classes that have no meaning to them, externally evaluate their every move with grades and tests, and make them spend the better part of each day in institutions where they are surrounded by adults who, by and large, are less interested in understanding or listening to them then in making them jump through hoops. The most productive, creative work environments are those in which people feel safe to do their jobs without someone breathing down their necks. The healthiest and most loving families are those in which family members care about and support each other unconditionally. Simply put, we feel the best way to assist people in finding their paths is to support them, believe in them, provide them with help when we are asked, and keep out of their way when we are not.