Home
| Wonderful mistakes |
|
|
| Written by Erin Harty - Argonaut | ||||||
| Monday, 31 August 2009 | ||||||
|
Throughout time people have been given the opportunity to erase their mistakes. In medieval times it was a wax tablet — a stone tablet inlaid with wax
that could be written on and then melted smooth again. Toy companies
built on this idea by giving children and the world Etch-A-Sketch,
magnetic doodle boards and even Lite Brite. With the more current
advent of erasable pens, whiteout and the delete button on computer
keyboards no one has to be privy to the mistakes made on a daily
basis.
The problem with this is not all mistakes are bad mistakes. Sure, there is an advantage to being able to correct misspellings in essays, clean up messy handwriting and rearrange ideas, but some of those ideas that get backspaced may have had value. Without such mistakes the world would be a sadder place. There would be no Silly Putty, no chocolate chip cookies, no Velcro and no sticky notes. Mistakes invented vulcanized rubber for tires, Coca-Cola, ready-made bandages and some vaccines. All these inventions were the result of happy accidents. Every day students are pushed to look at things from different angles, examine ideas and question outcomes. Through hard work, mistakes are made. The equation isn’t solved. The perfect story isn’t written, and music compositions include bad notes. But what if in the middle of all those mistakes there were some answers? Perhaps not the answers we were originally searching for, but new, exciting and unexpected answers to questions that hadn’t even been asked yet? Not every “mistake” needs to be erased. While some see mistakes as simply that — every mistake, if not a revolutionary way to change the world — can all be learned from. Mistakes are how people learn, how they strive to do better. Mistakes are an opportunity to excel. Author Elbert G. Hubbard said, “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” If students are so afraid of making mistakes they tip toe around an idea and treat it with kid gloves, then in fact, nothing will ever get done. No right answers, no beautiful prose, no unblemished performance and no mistakes. Without mistakes there can’t be happy accidents. Without mistakes there are no creative ideas, no opportunities to learn and grow and no reason to try to do better. Respond to this column at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  Add as favorites (21) | Views: 266
Write Comment
|
||||||
