Adolescence and the Value of Mistake-Based Education

Source: Carl Pickhardt

In school, while the curious young child may have been excited to learn, the less socially secure and more self-conscious adolescent may be reluctant to do so when the challenges of formal education can increasingly feel riskier to take.

For example, students in elementary school can be more eager to volunteer answers to teachers' questions than those in middle school, who feel increasingly shy about publicly speaking up in class. Now, social exposure and social reputation can feel at stake. And now the five basic risks of learning are more powerfully felt.

What risks? Consider these. To learn something new, you have to:

1. Declare ignorance and look stupid;
2. Make mistakes and get things wrong;
3. Feel slow compared to smarter others;
4. Look foolish when showing incapacity;
5. Get evaluated and failed for not knowing.

Beset by growing insecurities of adolescence, learning, particularly in a social situation like with competitive friends, in a classroom in front of other students, or in front of critical or impatient parents, can feel scarier to do. It can feel dangerous to try.

Because education exposes ignorance and incapacity, it’s important for influential people—like parents, teachers, and coaches (folks with instructional responsibility)—to make learning safe.

Adult behavior matters

Teaching adolescents can take a sensitive touch. It matters whether the instructor acts in ways that feel safe or unsafe for the adolescent.

Unsafe adults can be:

• Intolerant of ignorance: “You don’t know that?”
• Impatient with mistakes: “You’re not trying!”
• Critical of capacity: “What’s wrong with you?”
• Threatening of safety: “How can you be so slow?”
• Harshly evaluative: “You’ll never learn!”

Safe adults can:

• Support ignorance: “All learning starts with not knowing.”
• Value mistakes: “Getting it wrong is how you learn to get it right.”
• Be sensitive to struggle: “You’re learning at your own rate.”
• Respect courage: “You’re brave to keep trying.”
• Give supportive evaluation: “Now you know more than before.”

Fear of mistakes

Because young adolescents can fear trying or speaking up lest they "do or say something stupid or wrong," at worst looking foolish in the eyes of their peers, they need to be told about the principles of mistake-based education.

Teachers (and parents) might explain something like this.

• “Young or old, everybody gets some things wrong in life and makes mistakes. A mistake is a choice people would make differently if they could do it over again. People don’t make mistakes because they want to, but because they didn’t know any better at the time."
• “While all mistakes are costly, they can be worth the expense if they are used to inform and instruct. A bad mistake is valuable when it teaches a good lesson. Making a mistake is not a failing, but it’s foolish to repeat the same mistake. That said, sometimes people have to mess up a number of times before they learn enough the hard way to wise up."
• “The smartest people are not those who never make mistakes, but those who use mistakes to make better choices the next time around. The stupidest people are those who are unable or unwilling to admit and learn from their mistakes.”

The school of life

So, tell your teenager about learning from experience—when you’re growing up and when you’re grown up, too. Explain how The Great School of Life works. Maybe say something like this.

“In the great school of life, you and I will always be students.

We’ll never experience it all,

We’ll never know it all,

We’ll never master it all,

We’ll never get it all right,

We’ll all do some foolish things,

We’ll never pay enough attention,

And neither one of us will get all A’s.

The best we can do is our best, keep trying, and when the going gets hard, learn from what works as well as from the errors of our ways. And just so you know, as your parent, I may not have made your mistakes, but I sure made a bunch of my own. And despite my best intentions, I still do.”

Honoring mistakes

So, mistake-based education can have much to teach:

“I learned the hard way.”

“I know better now.”

“I’ll never do that again.”

“I’ll choose differently next time."

”From getting it wrong, I learned to get it right.”

Very important is parents discriminating between a misdeed and a mistake. A misdeed knowingly violates a rule: “You did what we told you not to.” A mistake is an error in judgment: “You thought it was safe when it wasn’t.” While they may decide to penalize misdeeds to discourage their repetition, they should never criticize or punish mistakes. Sometimes only mistakes can teach what instruction cannot.

Keep correction instructive

Constructive correction by parents takes self-discipline: They must subdue emotional upset so their best judgment can prevail. First calming themselves down, parents need to help the young person learn from choices made, using them to understand what happened, what not to do again, and what to do differently instead. They need to value mistake-based education.

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When yet another youthful mishap occurs, this is not a time for parents to give in to frustration or despair. This is not a time to criticize or punish in anger. Rather, this is an opening to helpfully instruct about what painful life experience has to teach about unwise choices and unwanted consequences.

At best, such encounters can help inform experience and be protective by preventing repetition from happening again: “Hopefully next time you’ll choose differently than you just did.”