Teaching Students to Embrace Mistakes

Teachers, like doctors, are expected to be mistake free. In the vast majority of classrooms, mistakes are evaluated as poor performance. Grades are lowered by mistakes. Students are encouraged both formally and informally not to make mistakes.

Changing perceptions about students' mistakes can improve learning. Why don't students view their mistakes as a valuable thing? Students don't think about their mistakes rationally -- they think about them emotionally. Mistakes make students feel stupid. "Stupid" is just that: a feeling. Specifically, it's the feeling of shame, and our natural response is to avoid its source. This belief system is absurd.

We're building a generation of students who are terrified about the possibility of failing. If people are afraid of mistakes, then they're afraid of trying something new, of being creative, of thinking in a different way. They're "victims of excellence."