From the Acting Principal
August 19, 2026 – Edition 10
The Value of Perseverance
This week is Science Week and there are a range of activities planned to celebrate the wonders of science. I have written before about the value of curiosity – not just scientific curiosity, but curiosity about people, places, and culture – but another important element in scientific thinking is the value of perseverance.
Many scientific endeavours rely on perseverance for success. One of the most famous examples of this quality in science is Thomas Edison’s involvement in the development of the incandescent light globe. As is often the case, several people were working on this idea and others may have achieved similar results first, but Thomas Edison is credited with developing the first practical implementation.
Edison said “our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try one more time”. This was not a simple platitude; he applied this principle to his own work, famously trying thousands of different materials and designs for the incandescent light bulb before finding a filament that was suitable. A quote often attributed to Edison captures this idea: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
So how does this apply to 21st-century education?
Perseverance can be applied to most endeavours, whether it involves trying out for a sports team, improving one’s understanding of a mathematical concept, learning a musical instrument, improving fitness, coding and debugging, applying essay structure to new topics or improving artistic skills.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can produce well-written text quickly and easily, sometimes, but if we fall into the trap of ‘offloading’ our thinking instead of using AI as a ‘thinking partner’, we may avoid the effort, but run the risk of missing the learning which, in reality, is the main thing.
The process of learning something genuinely new is almost always effortful. The joy of learning comes from applying one’s effort with perseverance to work towards mastery and understanding. There is no shortcut to this process. The ‘friction’ is where the value lies, not simply in the output or final product.
Robert Jacob
Acting Principal
