Errors Are Tools for Learning by Hannah

Errors Are Tools for Learning by Hannah - May 2014 Scholarship Essay

“Errors are tools for learning,” remarked my college Spanish professor on our very first day of class. As she sat at the front of the room on that gloomy August day, she went on to encourage her students that we shouldn’t be afraid to speak in class because even if we make a mistake, the whole class can learn from it. Her phrase “errors are tools for learning” seems like a very simple concept, but it gave me a lot of food for thought throughout the year.

I started noticing that in our culture, we try very hard to avoid making mistakes. We try our hardest to find “the one” to marry so we don’t end up getting a divorce, as if we had no choice in the matter. We try very hard to major in the perfect thing in college and take all the right classes so that we will have a job that we absolutely adore from the day after we graduate until the day we retire. And we try very hard to avoid speaking in class unless we are certain we have the most correct and perfect answer so that we will not feel embarrassed. And if we choose wrong- if we make a mistake- we beat ourselves up; we retreat and think of what we should have known or done in hindsight. We should not live this way as students or as people. A marriage is about committing to each other for better or for worse; we have different jobs for different seasons of life and collegiate majors do not define a person’s value, and if we never say a wrong answer, we have less of an opportunity to learn what the correct answer is and why. We stunt our growth by trying to avoid making an error, thinking that our embarrassment will be worse than losing the ability to think for ourselves.

In a classroom setting this concept is very important. Students who are afraid to participate cannot have a lively discussion in the classroom. If students cannot have a lively discussion, they will have less interest in the topic. If they have less interest in the topic, they will have less motivation to do their work. I have seen this phenomenon myself as a student and as a Teacher’s Aid in a variety of classrooms; if students are afraid of making errors, their academic success suffers.

My professor’s phrase of encouragement for her Spanish students did end up helping me to feel more comfortable speaking in her class. I didn’t feel so bad about making a mistake or hearing another student’s mistake because the errors actually did help me learn more. I learned more about what the right answer was, and more importantly I learned more about why it was the right answer; the error encouraged me to think. Of course “errors are tools for learning” should not be an excuse to be reckless or not put forth any effort, it is merely an encouragement to not be so afraid to try that you stunt your own growth. And that is a concept that is valuable in any classroom, including the classroom of life.