What's so wrong with being wrong? Kathryn Schultz is a journalist, author, and public speaker and quite possibly the world's leading wrongologist. In this talk, Kathryn leads us to think about our assumptions about being wrong and makes a case for embracing our fallibility.
Points to Ponder:
- Kathryn says that by age nine, we've developed a cultural mindset: the people getting things wrong on the assignment are dumb or lazy and success means no mistakes. Have you experienced this mindset? Did you live it? If you have children, how do you get around this mindset with them? If you teach, does this materialize in your student base? How does this concept work into your teaching philosophy?
- When you think about discussions in your class or in your office, can you relate to the "Series of Unfortunate Assumptions" Kathryn outlines?
- Do you have an "I thought this one thing was going to happen, then something else did" moment; either in a class or elsewhere that comes to mind?
- Have you ever thought much about being wrong? or the implications of assuming you're right (on a large scale? If everybody assumes he/she is always right...)
- What's one thing that stands about this talk?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJust checking....
ReplyDeleteThree thoughts:
ReplyDelete1) There are any number of stories of amazing scientific discoveries that occurred when an experiment went wrong, and while the scientist was trying to achieve one result "something else happened instead".
2) On many of my exams I give more credit for being able to demonstrate an understanding of important concepts than I do for getting the right answer. Students often have a hard time getting their heads around that idea. "Why didn't I get full credit? I got the right answer."
3) As teachers we should not be afraid of making mistakes in front of students. A former colleague was consumed by the need to always do things perfectly and never make a mistake in class, and it negatively impacted his teaching. We often can teach our students more when we allow ourselves to be wrong. There is much to be learned when things are not always smooth and polished and the unexpected is allowed to happen in the classroom.
I loved this week's lesson. My favorite idea was when she said we have "an attachment to rightness." Our daily conversations would be so much more meaningful if being right was not as important as being open, charitable and accepting. Likewise, when mistakes do happen, it is admirable to see those that take ownership for it.
ReplyDeleteI think we all have error blindness...it is just a matter of how far we go to defend it.
My primary reaction to the talk was to wonder if math is really just that different from everything else. We routinely find instances where even the smartest are wrong in their first reactions, and it's just not that first guess that matters (see Cal's "right answer" comment above). It's when you're wrong in your first impression that things get interesting.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I was struck by how awful her delivery is. She said things that were funny, but managed to keep anyone from laughing. It got painful.
I am lucky to have parents who are educators who value trial and error. Growing up, mistakes or being wrong was seen as something upon which to build, not to be ashamed of. Even with that background, I still remember being confused as to why other people were not taking advantage of what seemed like a free or cheap education. In one of my undergraduate education classes, while talking about access to education, I remember thinking that all inner-city (in my mind that mean people of color) children and families needed to do was simply go to school. It seemed so obvious to me at the time. Only after doing a lot of work in social justice and with my assumptions and racism did I realize it wasn't that easy. However, because I was so profoundly wrong I remember it well.
ReplyDeleteAs for teaching, I value and use Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory whenever possible because I believe it allows for and even encourages being wrong and constant improvement.
I often times find myself going down the path of Unfortunate Assumptions and need someone else to get me back on track. Due to the work of my previously mentioned parents, I have developed another assumption that everyone means well and is doing the best they can. I could probably consider that a "Fortunate Assumption" but as you can probably guess, these two paths/assumptions butt heads at times. I have to make myself reflect on times when I may have been the ignorant or evil one to help me understand where others are coming from.
Having a 14 month old daughter allows me to see this happen all the time. More personally, I always thought I would end up living in the Northeastern part of the United States. That was until I was offered a great job in the Midwest that was very close to my partner.
Over the past ten years I have thought much about what it means to be wrong but more from the standpoint of admitting it. I am now very quick to admit when I am wrong and want to do what I can to make things right. I haven't thought about how I feel like I'm right when I'm actually wrong. I need to spend some time with that.
One thing that stands out is that so many of the judgments we make are with a zero-sum society in mind. Either someone is right or they are wrong. If they are wrong, it's due to some deficiency and therefore they are less-than.
When we were struggling with assignments, my high school physics teacher used to say "you don't get it? Excellent!" I didn't think it was Excellent!
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher, I now think I know what he means. Sometimes it takes "not getting it" for the knowledge to actually get through and have some impact. Otherwise, we just think we're right and don't absorb the new material. Maybe it takes some dissonance to admit to being wrong (or limited in our viewpoints). Otherwise, we could very easily slip into the Unfortunate Assumptions.
In the world of standardized tests and "proving" that children are learning or at grade level, that doesn't seem to leave much time for children to be wrong. That makes me sad.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Cal that we need to allow people to see us make mistakes. We have to allow that people aren't perfect and should be the first example of that to students. It creates an environment that encourages students to take risks and to imagine. On the flip side of that, many of the students we work with haven't had a culture of this in their lives. They want to know the answers and spit them back. They don't want to "think" about anything. They want to prove what they know and move on. Until something changes in the school systems they come from, I don't see this changing.
As parents, we need to find the balance with our own children. The world we are sending them into values rightness. They need to be prepared for this and strive to find the correct answers. But, and this is a big but, we also need to encourage wonder. I think it is becoming harder and harder to do.
"by age nine, we've developed a cultural mindset: the people getting things wrong on the assignment are dumb or lazy and success means no mistakes"
ReplyDeleteThis statement is scary because it rings true, this is the cultural mind set. But, in my experience the statement its self is false. There are two things wrong with it. One there are people who get the right answer because their good at taking tests and, because they didn't have to work to get the right answer, end up being the laziest people in class. Second, getting the right answers (signified by getting strait As for example) means nothing in the long run if one didn't learn the lesson, or acquire the experience, behind the correct answer. The journey is more important than the destination.
I so wanted to forward this TED talk to my husband...in his eyes he is never wrong and someone else is to blame. HAHAHA!
ReplyDeleteWe are conditioned early to believe if you are wrong you do not have value. We should all be open to new ideas or methods because even if it does sound wrong it may be the best option. This could be in the classroom or in the workplace.
I can relate with this presnetation. I think she makes some valid points concerning the concept of right & wrong. I often am wrong in front of students as Cal points out & feels it helps put them at ease & allows them to express themselves not fearing "what if I am wrong" response.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think about the possibility of being wrong, I usually play it safe. I know what the results will be. My experience is lackluster. It is when I choose to take risks, knowing that I might get it wrong, that I learn the most.
ReplyDeleteIn Teacher Education, we talk a lot about the difference between playing it safe and taking risks; that it is in the reflection after an experience that pushes your teaching forward. Some students embrace the challenge to push out of their comfort zone. They are often the teachers I think are remarkable. I wonder, though, if they are the students who come to us without the internal sense of rightness that Schultz spoke of? Is that what made them the best and the brightest in the first place? Then we have the students who (I believe) we inspire to jump in and experience being wrong; the ones who, at first, are shattered by getting something wrong because they never have before, but through the opportunity to reflect, realize their own learning. The ones who rediscover wonder that highlight what we can do as educators. Lastly, we have the students who will not change their fixed mindset about learning--they either have it or they don't. The cultural mindset of wrong equals stupid or lazy that Schultz asserts is developed in elementary school (I believe even earlier), hinders their ability to try. Fear freezes them.
These are the students I find the most rewarding to work with. I feel that I am truly making an impact. Bringing me back to my first thought—it is when I choose to take risks, knowing that I might get it wrong, that I learn the most.
Some interesting ideas here, and I think being wrong (and realizing it) is really the point at which you learn. Academics are sometimes overly paranoid about being wrong, as it will cause to be attacked in public by our peers. On the other hand, I think most of us don't have the deep-set habit of assuming that we are right, and are always looking for ways to qualify what we say, or to make room for partial wrongness....
ReplyDelete"I don't know, maybe I'm wrong" but I think the jest of her talk is just learning to be accepting of other/new ideas and knowing that we are all human and subject to error and changes in our beliefs-even facts. Look how long Pluto was a planet. Statement of fact thus true or right. How many of us got that one wrong on a elementary science test??
ReplyDeleteIn dealing with children and students teaching those facts and ideas that we need to learn as we go through our educational system as right is, to me, a little different than a DR not knowing or admitting that the operation is being performed on the wrong side of a patient. One is learning the other conceit. Part of what needs to happen at an early age is understanding and accepting that sometimes it's ok to be wrong. But learn from that wrong answer.
But how do we KNOW what is right? Think about religion and politics for two prime examples Who is right or wrong in their beliefs there. Again the key is to be accepting of other beliefs and open to the idea that there might be something to learn from the other.
My snarky response is that, if she's so sure about being wrong, maybe we should take her at her word.
ReplyDeleteA more thoughtful answer brings to mind the need for good old-fashioned humility or the "postulate of ignorance." The latter suggests we proceed with caution, as if there might be an iceberg ahead in the dark.
How does this apply to teaching? It might suggest the need for checking our assumptions and doing careful research and analysis. However, I wouldn't want to suggest to students that, when it comes right down to it, everything's up for grabs, that we don't really know, and perhaps that most things are unknowable.
Boy, can I ever relate to this, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being I am (or used to be) excellent at remembering facts. I cruised through the early years of school being excellent at math, spelling and social studies, and got a lot of affirmation from that. When I was in a situation that didn't call for remembering facts, I was highly insecure, because I didn't know what to do, and I felt the ground of affirmation moving under me.
ReplyDeleteAs an observer of American politics I see this playing out every day, in ways that are deleterious to good public policy. To admit a mistake is almost always fatal to a political career. To change what had been conviction is almost always fatal. As a result, the government is unable to learn from experience, or respond to changing conditions. In a nutshell, the current economic policy debate is between the Democrats who must stand by everything they did whether they worked or not (mainly by pretending they did), and Republicans who are fixated on first principles that have long been battered in practice. No wonder it gives me a headache.
Her discussion of response-to-disagreement that begins at 10:30 is a perfect description of political dialogue in America today.
I have difficulty translating these principles into teaching. Students--most Coe students, anyway--are very comfortable with objective fact questions, and I think would rather get a C based on insufficient retention of facts than a B based on my subjective judgment of their imaginative or creative response. It doesn't assess well, either. To my "marketing monoculture" meme I might add the omnipresence of crude assessment measures in American life.
I enjoyed using being wrong to explore novel thinking. One example was bringing a dark sucker into class. The students could spend the entire class explaining to me how I was wrong. Most thought that light bulbs actually give off light. They would struggle with trying to explain why a bulb looked dark when it was full of dark and could not suck any more.
ReplyDelete“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”
Mark Twain
I have watched this presentation three or four times; each time I get something more out of it. The freedom to be wrong is freeing and very powerful. In particular, I liked the part about starting out with one intent and winding up someplace else.
ReplyDeleteI watched a Commencement speech by Jane Lynch given at Smith on May 20, 2012. She said "Let life surprise you. Don't have a plan. Plans are for wusses. If my life went according to my plan, I would never ever have the life I have today."
So if you have a plan or goal, and, as humans, we all do, allow yourself to be flexible (wrong) and embrace the ability to change directions. Education gives us alternatives - be it through academics or through life experiences. Inventions have occurred because something was planned, the hypothesis didn't work out, and something else was created. How can we teach that?
I don't think I've ever liked being wrong. I believe it comes from my "little sister" syndrome. There was nothing worse than my 3 older sisters pointing out when I was wrong. Ugh. Societal influence, probably.
ReplyDeleteEither way, luckily I don't think I have transferred this concept to education. Each mistake or time of being wrong becomes a learning experience. But I don't give out grades for the educating I'm doing. Doesn't this idea of being wrong is unacceptable continue to college? I sure remember people getting laughed at when they answer an "obvious" answer wrong. That's a sure fire way to get a student to never answer again! I also don't think I saw a professor ever handle that well. Sure they would say, no, that's okay, that's why we are going over this. But I never saw a good way of handling "being wrong" in the classroom. How do you turn it into a teachable moment for everyone, without making the student feel less than perfect? I guess that's a new challenge!
I was raised by a perfectionist mother and I can see that trait having been learned by all of my siblings. I went on to marry a perfectionist and now we have a hyper perfectionist son who cannot stand to get anything wrong no matter how hard we try to explain that making mistakes, getting some things wrong, is part of the learning process.
ReplyDeleteI do not remember ever having the same kind of need to have everything go right, or to be right the first time around, to the point of complete frustration as my son experiences daily; rather, it was others who sometimes got frustrated with my need to keep working on something until I got it completed to my satisfaction or my standard of "being right."
This is a different kind of right than is discussed in the talk, but the sense that something be completed a certain way is a form of needing to be right according to personal standards. It can be crippling. In fact, I see this often in working with students on creative projects where they are so self critical that they cannot even put down or commit to an initial idea let alone finish the project. This self-imposed need to get it right when there really is no right is a really tough place to be. All I can do is try to design projects that force instant intuitive response to minimize overly judgmental impulses from kicking in. I can also let them know that I understand their struggle and explain that, with time, their ability to trust their own instincts will grow enabling a freer and less self-critical process.