The Intro. to New Media Studies class today was pretty explosive. I had assigned excerpts in The New Media Reader from McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy and The Medium is the Message. I was up this morning about 5, reading some insightful and tremendously inspiring blog posts from the class. A couple of the posts were especially provocative, hortatory, probing. As it turns out, there was one highly engaged post I couldn’t understand fully. On the way in to school, I puzzled over what had led the student to make what I was fairly certain, but not altogether sure, was a mistaken identification of one of McLuhan’s references. I concluded that McLuhan’s reference to Coleridge must have been the thing the student couldn’t quite pinpoint. As I considered what I thought to be the mistake and a probable cause, it occurred to me that the mistake actually pointed to a deep and important connection that I should consider more carefully than I had. In other words, what I thought to be the student’s mistake, and my own attempts to diagnose its cause, stimulated my thinking in some very fruitful ways, to the point that I couldn’t wait to get the conversation started.
When I got to class, I asked the student for clarification, and as soon as the student realized the mistake, the student became embarrassed. I was dismayed by the embarrassment and tried to tell the student how thought-provoking and rewarding I had found the experience of grappling with the question of whether a mistake had been made and if so, how. The student replied with more embarrassment. In my ardent attempts to frame the mistake as a portal, I finally blurted out, “Penicillin was a mistake!” and then carried on with some reflections on how we must trust each other with our mistakes. We must be willing to open our minds to each other as we learn, and endure our mistakes, and be alert to the possibilities of learning that mistakes can reveal or even inadvertently stimulate. I said to myself how terrible it was that schooling had kept mistakes from being turned into opportunities while the learning was taking place. What messages have the designs of schooling sent to me, and to my students, when the rightful desires for accuracy and precision become massive inhibitions that block the revelations that are one or two steps away?
I hope the penicillin story was helpful. I followed it up with one of my favorite aphorisms, from Pasteur: “chance favors the prepared mind.” I thought again how vital trust is for any community, but especially a community of learning. I hoped against hope that the student understood how grateful I was for a risk, a mistake, and an opportunity for deeper engagement with the essay.
We’ll see.
EDIT: Re-reading this post, I see I left out one of the more interesting small ironies: I was mistaken about what had caused the student’s mistake. It wasn’t the Coleridge reference, it was confusion over the name Adam Smith. But behold another portal! My search for a plausible error-diagnosis led me astray in terms of the student’s mistake, but led me on quite effectively to focus my attention on a passage I’d not yet fully mined. There’s some elasticity of inquiry here, as well as a willingness to be entertained and instructed by one’s own great big floppy clown shoes. I’m working on loving my clown shoes and following where they lead, when I have the patience and grace for it.
Well put, Gardner. If only we all could be at ease with our mistakes… Imagine what we could learn!
It reminds me of an adage I heard once… Scientific discoveries rarely, if ever, follow a “eureka!” However, they often follow a, “hmmmm… That’s odd.”
Thank you for trying to teach the ability to learn from mistakes, I have much to learn from you, my friend.
@Barron I love that adage and use it all the time. I believe its source is Isaac Asimov–at least, that’s how I credit it when I use it. 🙂
Regarding the learning, well, vice-versa I’m sure!
According to Ted Miceri (USF), it’s Asimov: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny…'”
http://www.isaacasimov.info/more.html
I can’t find any source for the quotation other than “Isaac Asimov”; searching a few dictionaries of quotations either turned it up without a specific source, or else nothing at all. …That’s funny…
A community where mistakes are expected, yet not ignored is a special one. I feel that the mistakes we make are valuable when framed in relationship to one another. It always reminds me of Faulkner’s notion of his own novels, they were all mistakes (or as he puts it failures) yet the degree of searching for something within each of them is the testament to his struggle with complexity.
We spend a large part our lives trying to figure out what things are and how they fit together and then the rest (hopefully a significant chunk)– deciphering the clues, knowing that all those things are in fact something else, or many other something elses… not doors, but windows; not waving, but drowning; not mistakes, but discoveries; not I, but we. I wish I’d had more teachers that weren’t afraid, unwilling or unable to recognize and make beautiful mistakes. You’re students are lucky. And it sounds like you’re lucky to have them!
I’ve been mentally chewing on “Mistakes as Portals” since the day it was posted; I read it to my wife. I shared it with colleagues, and I’ve been considering a comment but haven’t been able to quite but my finger on why it’s occupied so much of my personal bandwidth 😉 Until now…
This post has the most relevance for me when I sit down to help my 7yo daughter with her homework; when she gets done, my wife or I check over it for her, point out which ones aren’t quite correct, so she can try again. The kid is only in the first grade, and she’s already been trained to be frustrated with mistakes. They upset and aggravate her. Mistakes cost her more time, and the homework is already becoming more of an exercise in jumping through the academic hoop, so she can move on to the things she’d prefer to do: reading and other games on the computer, playing outside with friends, exploring in the back yard etc.
I’ve always told her it’s okay to make mistakes. I know it’s important to make mistakes and that it’s possible to learn from them. But, if our schools have our young learners in only their second year of public school (1st grade) striving to avoid mistakes and playing the academic game and working to not fail rather than to learn, how do we begin to overcome the stigma attached to the concept of a “making a mistake.”
We’ve never been competitive with her schooling; we didn’t put her in early education designed to prepare her for kindergarten. We don’t push her to study during the summer; we aren’t worried now what her academic future may hold.
We read with her because we believe that’s important; we find ways for her to practice reading and other academic skills in ways that seem a litlte less bookish: computer games, traveling to see the Sam Houston museum rather than just talking about him, planning a family Spring Break trip to San Antonio to see the Alamo so she can create a digital story about the landmark and history.
Despite those efforts, we’re already struggling to get her to focus on the joy and satisfaction of learning rather than the grades and mistakes she makes. We’re trying, but it may be an uphill battle to keep the traditional schooling from coaching the creativity out of her. (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66)
-Chris
http://www.muveforward.com
edtechatouille.blogspot.com
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