The grading system in schools is one of the biggest problems in this regard; it conditions people into thinking that you have to always get good grades and never slip up in order to achieve anything, effectively turning us into paper-pushing machines. Mastery and understanding (which come from doing and failing) should be focused on rather than a numerical abstraction of what we think knowledge is. We should embrace failure as something to bounce back and learn from, not as something we need to avoid.