Although the touch-and-go character of educational processes has been known for some time, the pedagogy is inclined to dismiss the failure of pedagogical efforts as theoretical. Yet failure has been a strong theme in the literature since the modern era at latest. The contributions to this volume take into account the tension between the pedagogy's notorious optimism and literary texts' interest in failure and review selected examples of the question of which insights from the literary thematization of the failure of educational science reflections are to win.