I was catching up this week with an old friend … we’ll call him Bruce. He lives in another state and we used to work together; now we try to stay in touch by phone.

I’ve always considered Bruce to be the ultimate family man. He’d fly hundreds of miles from business assignments to watch his kids’ sporting events; conversations always included our offspring’s latest doings, seasoned with the usual measures of pride and regret. He’s that kind of friend — the kind with whom you don’t have to pretend to be the perfect parent. The rare kind with whom you can confide your lapses and disappointments.

Still, his statement took me by surprise the other day. We started talking about raising teenagers. “I’m not sure I have any wisdom at all on that subject,” he said. “In that department, I’m a failure.”

I was flabbergasted. I knew he’d provided his kids with love, support, good educations, attention. What was the problem?

One of them, he told me, has dropped out of college. The other gave up a good job to manage a rock band. They just don’t get it, he said.

The conversation took a philosophical turn. Bruce recently had cleaned out his basement, and had discovered boxes and boxes of sports trophies. He remembered countless competitions in which each kid on each team took home a trophy. “No matter how sloppy they were, no matter whether they tried or not, everyone would tell them: “Good job!” he remembered.

I remember that. It’s not whether you win or lose; it’s all about bolstering self-esteem.

Bruce thinks his kids got the wrong message. They were never allowed to fail; now they are having a hard time coping with the world.

My own kids have suffered from this philosophy, as well. My two oldest children went to elementary school in Australia in the 1980s, at a time when that country was still under the spell of the radical self-esteem movement. That meant that they were not taught how to spell but encouraged to use “creative” spelling. Their highly individualized spelling was not corrected in an effort to avoid damaging their self-esteem.

They were not taught times tables because rote learning was considered oppressive. The result: My 23-year-old son has to ask his 14-year-old sister how to spell the simplest words and would not be able to do elementary mathematical calculations if his old-fashioned dad hadn’t sat him down and made him learn his multiplication tables.

Australia at the time was in the outer arc of a swing away from traditional methods in education, and I have to say that I wouldn’t want to return to the world their dad described: corporal punishment and regular humiliation.

There has to be a middle way — doesn’t there? I think there is, and my youngest child has found it. Not in school, but in an organization called Pony Club.

Pony Club is all over the world, kind of a scouting movement for kids who ride horses. In my kid’s life, it has dished out her share of failures. Acknowledging that riding is a potentially dangerous sport that also involves the participation of an animal that needs constant care, Pony Club demands a lot of its participants.

With riding, you can’t afford to let a child think she’s in control if she really isn’t. The consequences are too serious.

Pony Club kids progress by taking tests, called ratings. The examiner gives them detailed feedback after a rating. If they fail (which often happens), they know exactly what they need to work on. My kid failed three times before she finally got her last rating.

It was very tough. Each time, there were tears. And each time, after a day of mourning, she got back to work on the skills the examiner had found wanting.

On the other hand, Pony Club is all about kids encouraging each other. They compete in teams rather than individually. Humiliation and bragging are frowned on. Kids get kudos from helping each other and sharing knowledge. And if they think they’ve been judged unfairly, they can lodge an inquiry and appeal to a higher power.

I’ve often wished school were more like Pony Club, where kids learn that failure is real but needn’t be permanent and you always get another chance; where they learn to negotiate with adults and help each other out.

As it is, too many kids go through elementary and middle school being told that any effort at all is superb and then get a huge shock when they hit high school.

For some, the shock doesn’t come until college. All of a sudden, the teacher doesn’t care if you fail — and you don’t have too many chances to try again.

Neither model is much like life. One tells kids there’s no such thing as failure; the other makes them feel that failure is permanent.

In the real world, failure is real, but some of the most successful people forge their victories from terrible, bruising defeats.

I suspect Bruce’s kids eventually will get it. Life without a college degree in America is no picnic. Meanwhile, my own kid is looking to her next rating — and trying to find her way with teachers who aren’t there to hold her hand.

It’s tough. Bruce and I both watch in trepidation, try to help where we can, and pray they don’t run out of chances. For us, as parents, as well as our kids, failure is inevitable. What comes after failure is the interesting part.