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Last week, I visited a school that has a special mission to teach kids with dyslexia. In one classroom perched high and near the front, positioned at a focal point of the room hung a sign: “Mistakes are proof you’re trying.” Later that day, I heard a young girl who attends a different school say to her mother, “Well, I just made careless mistakes here which is why I got that grade.”
Think for a moment on your own experience in school. Which attitude did your teachers present to you? Mistakes or Perfection encouraged? In my experience, the latter — I still see my third grade teacher with her red pen sitting at her desk making Xs on my math test, while the students waiting in line behind me watched to see my results. Xs everywhere.
As I reflect on my early career as a teacher, I tried to encourage mistakes, to see reading, writing, and thinking as a continual process. I had studied the great books of literature, history, and philosophy, and during that study I learned every human fails often and usually on profoundly moral levels. So, I hope in my classroom, I taught my students that everyone, including me, makes mistakes. It’s impossible to learn without them.
Right now, I’m reading a superb book, Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries by Safi Bahcall. He details the great innovations of…
