Mistakes

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Two stories to illustrate my point about allowing students to make mistakes.

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Thomas Watson, President of IBM

 

A Senior VP who worked for Watson made a $10 million mistake.

Afterwards the VP very nobly walks into Watson’ office and offers his resignation.

 

Watson replies, “What, after I just spent $10M on your education, I am going to fire you?  You just learned something very valuable.”

 

 

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Grandfather and grandson are at a fishing-hole.  The grandson says to the grandfather “How did you get to be so smart, so wise?  Grandfather says to grandson “Good judgment.”  Grandson says to grandfather, “How did you get good judgment?”  Grandfather says, “I got good judgment from experience, experience gave me good judgment.”  Grandson says to grandfather, “How did you get experience?”  Grandfather looks at his grandson with a twinkle in his eye and says,”Bad judgment.”

 

Making mistakes part of the course of human learning.

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Learned Helplessness

How does it apply to your classrom?

 

Martin Seligman put dogs put in boxes and applied electrical shocks to the floor, Two groups of dogs; one group of dogs with doors to another room (control group) and another group of dogs without doors to another room (experimental group). The control group moved to the other room through the door while the experimental group had no recourse for avoiding or escaping the electrical shock. The controlled group learned success by getting shocked and going through the door.

Subsequently, he shocked half the floor. The dogs with the door (control group) stepped over to the other side of the floor which was not shocked, while the dogs without the door (experimental group) lay on the floor on the shocked side of the floor and never stepped over to the un shocked side of the floor.

The experimental group of dogs learned that based on past experiences, there was no opportunity for success no matter what behaviors they utilize.

They were not provided scuffling for success. Carry out to humans who start defining themselves as failures. They see failure as permanent, personal, and persuasive, it is not going to change.

Opposite of this is self-efficacy. People start to define themselves as failures, I am doomed to fail, no sense of trying. Opposite is self-efficacy, I did poorly on the test because I had a bad day, I will do better next time because I will study, it is not my best subject anyway.

Helplessness is the same chemical composition in the same brain area as depression.

What classroom relevance does Seligman's experiment demonstrate?  

Read any of the outstanding work by Martin Seligman, particulary Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control for a examination of this topic.