The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
~Elbert Hubbard
Thanks to Vicki from Reading at the Beach for the quote. What do you all think?
Showing posts with label mistakes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mistakes. Show all posts
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz
"If you mortgaged your family's future on your faith in Bernie Madoff; if you hitched your whole wagon to a doctrine or deity you no longer believe in; if you were wrong about someone you loved and the kind of life you thought the two of you would live together; if you have betrayed your own principles in any of the countless dark ways we can surprise ourselves over the course of a lifetime: if any of this or anything like has happened to you, then you have suffered in the space of pure wrongness." Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz, p.187
I picked up Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz at the library after noticing it was on my Amazon recommendations. Schulz explores why it is so hard for us to admit being wrong (especially without the phrase "I was wrong, but..."), the plus side of error, big mistakes and trivial mistakes, why everyone makes mistakes, how we view those mistakes in retrospect, the process we go through when we change our minds about something we were once certain about, and so much more.
If you are a non-fiction reader, you will probably want to check this one out. There are some drier parts of the book but Schulz's debut is also full of fascinating research and anecdotes.
A few excerpts:
As with dying, we recognize erring as something that happens to everyone, without feeling that it is either plausible or desirable that it will happen to us. Accordingly, when mistakes happen anyway, we typically respond as if they hadn't, or as if they shouldn't have: we deny them, wax defensive about them, ignore them, downplay them, or blame them on somebody else. p.6
Doctors don't teach medical students the theory of bodily humors, and astronomy professors don't teach their students to calculate the velocity of the fifty-five concentric spheres Aristotle thought composed the universe. This is practical and efficient pedagogy, but it shores up our tacit assumption that current belief is identical with true belief, and it reinforces our general sense of rightness. p. 21
Believing something on the basis of messy, sparse, limited information really is how we err. But it is also how we think. What makes us right is what makes us wrong. p.122
In the optimistic model of wrongness, error is not a sign that our past selves were failures and falsehoods. Instead, it is one of those forces, like sap and sunlight, that imperceptibly helps another organic entity -- us human beings -- to grow up. p. 289
As soon as we think we are right about something, we narrow our focus, attending only to details that support our belief, or ceasing to listen altogether. By contrast, when we are aware that we could be wrong, we are far more inclined to hear other people out. p. 310
And finally,
Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey, and a story. Who really wants to stay home and be right when you can don your armor, spring up on your steed and go forth to explore the world? True, you might get lost along the way, get stranded in a swamp, have a scare at the edge of a cliff; thieves might steal your gold, brigands might imprison you in a cave, sorcerers might turn you into a toad -- but what of that? To fuck up is to find adventure: it is in that spirit that this book is written. p.42-43
I picked up Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz at the library after noticing it was on my Amazon recommendations. Schulz explores why it is so hard for us to admit being wrong (especially without the phrase "I was wrong, but..."), the plus side of error, big mistakes and trivial mistakes, why everyone makes mistakes, how we view those mistakes in retrospect, the process we go through when we change our minds about something we were once certain about, and so much more.
If you are a non-fiction reader, you will probably want to check this one out. There are some drier parts of the book but Schulz's debut is also full of fascinating research and anecdotes.
A few excerpts:
As with dying, we recognize erring as something that happens to everyone, without feeling that it is either plausible or desirable that it will happen to us. Accordingly, when mistakes happen anyway, we typically respond as if they hadn't, or as if they shouldn't have: we deny them, wax defensive about them, ignore them, downplay them, or blame them on somebody else. p.6
Doctors don't teach medical students the theory of bodily humors, and astronomy professors don't teach their students to calculate the velocity of the fifty-five concentric spheres Aristotle thought composed the universe. This is practical and efficient pedagogy, but it shores up our tacit assumption that current belief is identical with true belief, and it reinforces our general sense of rightness. p. 21
Believing something on the basis of messy, sparse, limited information really is how we err. But it is also how we think. What makes us right is what makes us wrong. p.122
In the optimistic model of wrongness, error is not a sign that our past selves were failures and falsehoods. Instead, it is one of those forces, like sap and sunlight, that imperceptibly helps another organic entity -- us human beings -- to grow up. p. 289
As soon as we think we are right about something, we narrow our focus, attending only to details that support our belief, or ceasing to listen altogether. By contrast, when we are aware that we could be wrong, we are far more inclined to hear other people out. p. 310
And finally,
Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey, and a story. Who really wants to stay home and be right when you can don your armor, spring up on your steed and go forth to explore the world? True, you might get lost along the way, get stranded in a swamp, have a scare at the edge of a cliff; thieves might steal your gold, brigands might imprison you in a cave, sorcerers might turn you into a toad -- but what of that? To fuck up is to find adventure: it is in that spirit that this book is written. p.42-43
Monday, May 3, 2010
Learning at Home: A Mother's Guide to Homeschooling Take II (negative interpetations and making mistakes)
On pages 31-34 Layne talks about learning from mistakes, allowing children to make mistakes, repentance (she says “repentance really means . . . to change your way of thinking and to act differently” – easier said than done, eh? Seems like another good thing to keep in the front of one's consciousness), interpreting children’s intentions/inferring children’s motives and children’s need to be taught to express anger, rage, frustration in an appropriate way. I’m truly trying to not just type out the whole book for you, but it’s just such good stuff that it’s hard to rein myself in!
She says that, if you are homeschooling, the way that you view mistakes (and react to them) becomes a part of your child’s learning environment (clearly this is true to some extent even if your child attends school outside of the home, but it makes sense to me that this is even more true in a homeschooling family).
Attributing “bad” motives or intentions to a child’s (spouse’s, friend’s) behavior is such an easy pitfall for humans, isn’t it? “It has taken me years of thinking this through, and observing my children to see how often I infer a motive for an action that says more about myself than about my child” (p. 35). Can I get an “Amen!”? I just think this is such a spot-on observation.
My confession of the day, related to negative interpretations – Recently Fiona and I were getting ready to walk to the grocery store with our little wire mesh cart. When I walked into the living room, she had just finished placing Felix, one of the two cats we are fostering, into the cart. It looked like he was scared -- the spaces in between the metal are larger than a cat’s foot and it looked like he was trying to climb out but couldn’t quite do it. I reacted much more out of sympathy to Felix than a desire to understand Fiona’s point of view. My inner dialogue was probably something along the lines of “Ack! My child is hurting an animal! Ack! I want her to be gentle with them! Why would she put Felix in the cart when it is so obviously not a good/safe place for him and she knew it would freak him out?!” I got Felix out and was talking to Fiona about how it “wasn’t okay” to put him in the cart and how it wasn’t a funny joke, how I wanted her to be gentle to the cats, etc., etc., etc. In retrospect, I wish I had focused on helping Felix feel safe and saying something along the lines of “I wonder if you were interested to see what Felix would do in the cart – We don’t have it out very much and it probably seemed like such a perfect little place for Felix to hang out. I bet you didn’t notice how big those holes in the cart were, huh? Were you surprised when he didn’t like it in there?” I could also have asked her if she wanted to help Felix get back out. I think part of the irony is that it’s not like me reacting the way I did soothed Felix’s nerves or helped him in any way – in fact, my tone of voice while talking to Fiona probably just made him more stressed out! This is something I think about often when one child hurts another – so often it seems like the focus is on making sure the child who did the hurting gets chastised – what are we modeling when we do that? It certainly isn’t helping the hurt child to feel better and, in my opinion, the “hurt-er” isn’t really learning anything other than that perhaps the next time s/he’ll slug someone where there aren’t adults around to watch!
A final quote from this section on page 35:
All quotes from Learning at Home used with author's permission: www.martylayne.com
She says that, if you are homeschooling, the way that you view mistakes (and react to them) becomes a part of your child’s learning environment (clearly this is true to some extent even if your child attends school outside of the home, but it makes sense to me that this is even more true in a homeschooling family).
Attributing “bad” motives or intentions to a child’s (spouse’s, friend’s) behavior is such an easy pitfall for humans, isn’t it? “It has taken me years of thinking this through, and observing my children to see how often I infer a motive for an action that says more about myself than about my child” (p. 35). Can I get an “Amen!”? I just think this is such a spot-on observation.
My confession of the day, related to negative interpretations – Recently Fiona and I were getting ready to walk to the grocery store with our little wire mesh cart. When I walked into the living room, she had just finished placing Felix, one of the two cats we are fostering, into the cart. It looked like he was scared -- the spaces in between the metal are larger than a cat’s foot and it looked like he was trying to climb out but couldn’t quite do it. I reacted much more out of sympathy to Felix than a desire to understand Fiona’s point of view. My inner dialogue was probably something along the lines of “Ack! My child is hurting an animal! Ack! I want her to be gentle with them! Why would she put Felix in the cart when it is so obviously not a good/safe place for him and she knew it would freak him out?!” I got Felix out and was talking to Fiona about how it “wasn’t okay” to put him in the cart and how it wasn’t a funny joke, how I wanted her to be gentle to the cats, etc., etc., etc. In retrospect, I wish I had focused on helping Felix feel safe and saying something along the lines of “I wonder if you were interested to see what Felix would do in the cart – We don’t have it out very much and it probably seemed like such a perfect little place for Felix to hang out. I bet you didn’t notice how big those holes in the cart were, huh? Were you surprised when he didn’t like it in there?” I could also have asked her if she wanted to help Felix get back out. I think part of the irony is that it’s not like me reacting the way I did soothed Felix’s nerves or helped him in any way – in fact, my tone of voice while talking to Fiona probably just made him more stressed out! This is something I think about often when one child hurts another – so often it seems like the focus is on making sure the child who did the hurting gets chastised – what are we modeling when we do that? It certainly isn’t helping the hurt child to feel better and, in my opinion, the “hurt-er” isn’t really learning anything other than that perhaps the next time s/he’ll slug someone where there aren’t adults around to watch!
A final quote from this section on page 35:
Perhaps . . . our children don’t understand our language and we need to find a way to communicate in their language. We need to trust in their ability to achieve mastery and allow them to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes just as they did when they were learning to walk. We need to trust in our development and learn from our mistakes.
All quotes from Learning at Home used with author's permission: www.martylayne.com
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