Take Chances, Make Mistakes, Get Messy

American education, and subsequently higher education, has socialized its students to approach learning as a series of checklists, focused more on "what do I need to know to get a good grade" and less on the skills gained through the learning process. Many educators would argue that they strive for the latter and recognize that concepts like "trial and error" (Young, 2009) have a place in the learning process and should be supported in the academic setting. Yet how is that accomplished when perfection is idolized through GPA? How do you encourage imperfection as a value to the perfectionist who establishes their sense of self-worth on the difference between an A and an A-minus? How do you encourage vulnerability in classroom discourse to encourage learning at a deeper level?

Let's take a trip!

The Magic School Bus took students on fantastical journeys to learn about various science topics, from biology, geology, astronomy, and more. The Scholastic publishing company produced its first issues of the book The Magic School Bus in 1986 (Scholastic, nd.) and subsequently became an animated television show distributed on PBS in 1996 (Clarke, 2005). Young readers and viewers could identify with the elation that came with field trips in school coupled with the chance to explore and learn something new. 

Ms. Frizzle is one of my favorite fictional teachers. The title of this post is one of her famous tag lines from the show. Often Ms. Frizzle shared these words to foster a spirit of exploration among her students and to expand their minds on how they understood a system or function in the world around (or inside of) them. Yet what was critical in her pedagogy for fostering learning in her class was the acknowledgement that learning required risk, included failure, and was not always precise. This is a mantra that is missing in modern higher education. 

True growth isn't always precise, risk-free, or guaranteed. Academic scholarship often grows due to our commitment to testing the boundaries of how we construct knowledge and how that knowledge informs our understanding of self and others. We should examine how our systems of evaluation actually promote a strict adherence to "getting the grade" versus an honest cultivation of learning that can occur from failure. We just might get students who are willing to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy.

REFERENCES

Clarke, M.M. (2005, June 20). A scholastic achievement. Broadcasting & Cable. Retrieved from https://www.nexttv.com/news/scholastic-achievement-72609

Scholastic (nd.). History. Retrieved from https://www.scholastic.com/aboutscholastic/history/

Young, H.P. (2009). Learning by trial and error. Games and Economic Behavior, 63(2), 626-643.