Despite the fact that thanks to modern technology we have access to information anywhere and anytime, children still go to school to “get” the information and live in the world where only one answer is correct and where learning is assessed by the number of right answers.
Therefore, children are doing their best to avoid making mistakes and are afraid of giving wrong answers. However, according to Diana Laufenberg, who has been a secondary social studies teacher in Wisconsin, Kansas, Arizona and Pennsylvania for over 15 years:
This is the absolute wrong thing to ask: to tell kids to never be wrong. To ask them to always have the right answer, doesn’t allow them to learn.
Instead, teachers should “ask students to go to places, to see things for themselves, to actually experience the learning, to play, to inquire”.
Watch her inspirational video on TED and discover why embracing failure is an essential part of learning in today’s world
