Nurturing Talent: The Freedom to Fail

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts recently gave the graduation address for his son’s middle school class at the Cardigan Mountain School in Canaan, New Hampshire.  In the address, Chief Justice Roberts emphasized the importance of experiencing failure:

"From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated un­fairly, so that you will come to know the value of jus­tice. I hope that you will suf­fer be­trayal be­cause that will teach you the im­por­tance of loy­alty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be con­scious of the role of chance in life and your suc­cess is not com­pletely de­served and that the fail­ure of oth­ers is not com­pletely de­served ei­ther.... I hope you’ll be ig­nored so you know the im­por­tance of lis­ten­ing to oth­ers, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn com­pas­sion."

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