12th June 2015 7:00
By Blue Tutors
I read recently that professor of cognitive science at King’s College London has announced a war, of sorts, on the eraser. It is, he says, a dreadful scourge of the classroom that should be banned. Why? Because it teaches students that mistakes are something to be ashamed of, something to hide. Something to be erased. Some commentators have found this hard to take seriously, but the more I read, the more I found myself agreeing with him. As a tutor I have had many students who really struggle to get over mistakes. Where they should be useful teaching exercises, mistakes have become something that are really holding students back.
Firstly, I wondered, why has this happened? When did making a mistake become such a terrible thing? In part, the answer to that lies in the increasing reliance on testing and exam results in British schools. Today’s students are tested more than ever before, beginning at age 4 when they enter school for the first time. Some students are even tested before this; children whose parents wish to send them to independent primary schools are often subjected to entrance ‘exams’ aged 3, for which they are prepared by their parents and private tutors. This is the start of a long career of exams, which teach students that mistakes are not an option. Indeed, the private tuition industry thrives in part on parents’ concerns that their children should perform as well as possible in exams, in order to ensure that they can move on to the university courses and careers that they want.
Whilst tutors have to accept that this is a reality for their students, is there also a way to make mistakes more positive? The professor with the aversion to erasers has a good point here. The key to lessening fear of mistakes is to show how useful they can be. Most private tutors will attest that often learning from mistakes engenders deeper understanding than just having understood the basics first time round and moving on. Mistakes are one of the most effective teaching tools; evaluating work with students and having them talk through things that went wrong usually results in them absorbing the points being made at a deeper level. Whilst making mistakes in exams isn’t ideal, by contrast, mistakes are often the best way to prepare for them.