a. m. gamble

rosasay:

The physicist Niels Bohr once defined an expert as “a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” Bohr’s quip summarizes one of the essential lessons of learning, which is that people learn how to get it right by getting it wrong again and again. Education isn’t magic. Education is the wisdom wrung from failure.

And…

The problem with praising kids for their innate intelligence — the “smart” compliment — is that it misrepresents the psychological reality of education. It encourages kids to avoid the most useful kind of learning activities, which is when we learn from our mistakes. Because unless we experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong — that surge of Pe activity a few hundred milliseconds after the error, directing our attention to the very thing we’d like to ignore — the mind will never revise its models. We’ll keep on making the same mistakes, forsaking self-improvement for the sake of self-confidence. Samuel Beckett had the right attitude: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Same in the workplace. The rub? Employees know they aren’t students anymore, and know they are expected to be competent. They consider their managers to be their “next teachers” to a much more limited degree —- unless the work culture created by an Alaka‘i Manager helps them feel differently, safe to make those mistakes necessary in learning, for the learning should never stop.

In the Talking Story archives: Failure isn’t cool. Neither is weakness

enchntdrose:

My fragile shell of self-confidence is, well, fragile.

I had a sobering thought today after thinking about differing interpretations of literature and how/why we interpret things differently. And I basically came to the conclusion that I don’t know who I am, intellectually.

I (and countless others) have spent my academic career catering to the wants of my teachers, even if I didn’t necessarily agree with want they thought…

A key moment in my college career: a professor explains again what his point is, and I answer, “I understand what you’re saying—I just don’t agree with it.”

Nevertheless, another moment, another professor: “I just want to say, thank you so much for speaking in class. It’s such a relief; when I’m the only one talking it’s so boring.”

Many years later, I overhear teens talking about some TV show and have to resist the urge to wade in and explain what’s really going on. They’re so utterly missing the point! They know nothing of the context! And then they’ve each got a scene or a plot element to point out that the other (including me) hasn’t noticed.