Encouraging students to be confident in their abilities—even while they make mistakes—must be one of the most herculean feats teachers are asked to accomplish. Some cognitive scientists, however, believe the key to solving this conundrum is to ban the eraser.
Enter Guy Claxton, a visiting professor and cognitive scientist at Kings College London. Claxton’s made some waves after some rather inflammatory remarks about “rubbers,” or erasers to those of us in the United States. In interviews with the Daily Telegraph, Claxton said that erasers:
...create a culture of shame about error. It’s a way of lying to the world, which says, “I didn’t make a mistake. I got it right the first time.”
Instead, he says, students should embrace mistakes wholeheartedly, which means dumping all means of eradicating mistakes—whether it’s pink erasers or Wite-Out for pens.
Not all educators agree, of course. John Coe with the National Association for Primary Education (NAPE) told the BBC that he thinks getting rid of erasers “is a draconian action.” He did, however, add a caveat:
However, on occasion, rubbers should not be used. If I'm teaching a class mathematics, I'd want them to show workings. I wouldn't want my pupils to be so overwhelmingly concerned for the correct answer that they didn't show me any indication - and that includes the wrong answer - as to how they got to the answer they arrived at. [...] The observation of children’s mistakes is essential to good teaching. Teachers need to observe all the attempts children make so they can target their instructions.
Child psychology expert Anthony Williams agreed with Coe, saying to the BBC that “own[ing] up to a mistake is a big step to make,” though he doesn’t endorse removing erasers entirely. He likened the removal of erasers from a classroom to ripping the delete key from keyboards:
More and more of the classroom takes part on IT. Would you take away the delete key? Can you imagine doing your job, or other people doing theirs, if you took away the delete key? In the real world, we are always making minor mistakes, revising, changing.
While erasers almost feel like relics of a bygone age, it seems like most classrooms will be keeping their “instruments of the devil”—while still encouraging students to learn from their mistakes.
Additional ISM resources:
ISM Monthly Update for Business Officers Vol. 12 No. 8 Policy Planning for Social Media Meltdowns
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 28 No. 4 Good to Great: Implications for Private-Independent School Management
