Why We Should Teach Students to Make Constructive Mistakes

“The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake – you can’t learn anything from being perfect.”

 – Adam Osborne

The value of a mistake made, and a lesson learned is one of the most priceless concepts of growth that students can learn in their school life. But the tiring perceptions of failure and defeat are yet to be challenged by the traction of education to build more resilient learners and radically change the inadequate idea of perfectionism in young minds. The art of making constructive mistakes enables students to accept their errors and failures in a positive light, and prepares them to develop and translate new skills into the real world.

Recognising mistakes as an important element of their learning pattern, students can readily learn to model resilience and persistence in their process while working towards their goals and aspirations. Over 46 studies on the power of resilience show clear evidence of many positive factors such as higher self-esteem and more positive attributional styles in resilient individuals who acknowledge their mistakes and failures more optimistically. The key to building a powerful tribe of resilient young minds is to tackle the notion of making mistakes as a productive and fruitful experience for students to embrace and learn from.

An Opportunity to Learn

“You can only go forward by making mistakes.” – Alexander Mc Queen

Failure can never be the end game on the quest of consistent growth and knowledge in a healthy learning atmosphere. Just as making mistakes is one way to test your knowledge and understanding of the concepts, it is also an opportunity to learn from them taking a constructive approach. Being mindful of this natural learning curve and allowing for an ‘error‐friendly’ system of education ensures that students see failure as a concept of growth, instead of an overwhelming defeat. It’s important for students to recognise making mistakes as a part and parcel of a constructive lifestyle.

Source of Guidance

Failure is knowledge gained essentially in light of learning from the mistakes we make as humans. Teaching students to see mistakes as a source of guidance where we lack a greater vision of our shortcomings is the first step to embracing mistakes and developing a mindset that supports their growth path. Offering new insights to set better goals and achieve more, a mistake-friendly environment helps to eradicate the fear of losing in students to encourage students to take an active role in their learning, embracing growth and guidance in all shapes and forms. SNIS Boarding School in Bangalore is an authorized IB World School and Cambridge international school where we nurture every learner with key concepts of fundamental growth, teaching them to embrace mistakes as their guide to success and achievement.

Cultivating a Growth Mechanism 

Accepting and taking mistakes into account as a big part of student learning tears down the walls of self-imprisonment where students cling to a limited world view, afraid of exploring new things that go beyond their comfort zone. Bringing the ideology of continuous exploration through our mistakes and exploring new opportunities is vital for students to learn the art of making constructive mistakes and build a mechanism of constant growth. Mistakes are those assets to every student’s arsenal that help them expand their learning path by ‘failing forward’ and lead to success. Putting greater emphasis on independent thinking in our teaching pedagogies at SNIS Boarding School in Bangalore, we motivate our students to prosper in a multi-faceted learning atmosphere, and focus on personality development and building self-confidence to help them stand out as all-round thinkers.

Build Resilience

Changing the perception of failure in young minds is the way to build resilient learners who cultivate higher self-esteem and adhere to lower levels of socially-prescribed perfectionism in life. Teaching students to move away from the flawless state of 100% perfection to pick a more realistic idea of constant progress in life, promotes a more positive concept of learning. It’s time to normalize the concept of making mistakes and allow students to rethink their learning approach as a means to enhance their strengths to build resilience and encourage higher self-worth. All major life lessons worth their weight come from making mistakes that take us forward, building a mindset of constant growth and persistence. At SNIS IB Boarding School in Bangalore, we nurture the exceptional qualities of uniqueness and creativity to build resilient learners and help them explore their learning potential in an environment of learning

beyond.