The Education System Should Allow Children to Make Mistakes – Why?
Children and adults often think that they don’t have the brain for certain skills. These thoughts not only deceive ourselves but also undermines our ability to learn. This can be anything from math, basketball, or playing an instrument. Making mistakes is the key to overcoming these barriers. With parents and family labeling them as smart, every year students set off to school excitedly to learn new things. However, when they see somebody who seems to be faster and better at learning, or when they make mistakes they start doubting themselves. This causes them to lose interest in their studies. Without embracing mistakes as a part of education, adults reveal that they haven’t gone into areas they wanted to pursue because they felt they weren’t good enough. Meetings in the workplace cause anxiety as they feel it’s all over if a mistake has been made. Mistakes should be viewed as a stepping stone for deeper learning and should not be treated as something to be punished for.
Mistakes Help the Brain Grow
Research reveals that more brain activity occurs when mistakes are made. So when the wired-to-learn children’s brains make mistakes, it’s a good thing. Shockingly, this brain activity happens whether or not the person knows they have made a mistake. It has been proved using MRI scans, that depict synapses firing in the brain. When a question is answered correctly, no synapses are firing. So mistakes are what helps the brain to grow and this could be what makes the child develop either a fixed and growth mindset.
Fixed vs Growth Mindset
When people have a fixed mindset, it means that they think they are either smart or they’re not. While a growth mindset means that they accept their shortcomings in certain areas and work towards improving themselves. There is no point in motivating children by saying that they can become anything and then enrolling them in classrooms that test their knowledge using short questions whose answers are either right or wrong. So, when they get it right they are praised. If they get it wrong, they feel discouraged. They think they lack the aptitude for that subject and get into a fixed mindset of “I’m not a math person” or “Physics isn’t for me”. This is predominant in the area of mathematics. Children need a growth mindset to reach their potential, they need to see difficult subjects as growth subjects instead of developing an aversion to them.
Why Fixed Mindsets Need to be Discouraged
A fixed mindset limits brain growth and intellectual development. A person with a fixed mindset avoids challenges and risks. However, a person with a growth mindset likes to face challenges head-on and loves learning new things. They understand that with effort, they can do it and, as they work to learn and understand the problem, their brain creates new connections between neurons (synapses) and develops the intellect.
How to Build a Growth Mindset
Encourage mistakes: Do not discourage children when they make mistakes. Tell them that you’re glad they made a mistake because it helps their brain grow. By understanding that it’s a mistake they have a deeper understanding. When such a statement is made clear, children relax and are much more enthusiastic to take up the next task.
Explain why: Tell students or your children why making mistakes is a good thing. Inform them about brain growth.
Avoid pressured tests: Do not use time-pressured activities and tests. They give the impression that education is about finding fast answers and not about learning.
Challenging work: Instead, give students material that encourages mistakes. For example, math questions need to be challenging enough to make mistakes but not make them feel completely disappointed.
A Struggle is a Reason to Celebrate
If children aren’t struggling, they aren’t really learning. Researchers talk about the need for desirable difficulties to push the brain to perform difficult tasks. Teachers often don’t want their students to struggle with learning, however, when the struggle is embraced, it’s freeing. It alters the way students go about their work they become more persistent. They look for new ways to tackle the problem instead of giving up after a few tries.
Give up Labels
If we tell children that they’re smart which most parents often do, at first, kids are proud that they’re smart. But later, when they struggle to grasp a concept or make an error, their confidence plummets and they think they’re not good enough. These labels can draw in an aversion to learning. So, rather than calling someone smart, we can compliment them by saying “I love your creative solution”, “This is a good approach to the problem”, etc. It’s important to know that everyone is on a growth journey and there is no cut off wherein one person is smart and another is not.
