The British paper.....The Guardian.....put an interesting article over a noted scientist at King's College in London. Guy Claxton spoke out in a public statement: "Erasers are an 'instrument of the devil' and, as such, they should be banished from our classrooms. Children should be encouraged to learn from their mistakes, rather than feel ashamed of them, he explains. They shouldn’t feel the need to pretend to have got things right the first time, but should be encouraged to try things out, take wrong turns and see what they can learn in the process".
Yeah, it's kind of a radical statement.
To be honest....since around 1975....I've been a pen guy....refusing to carry or use a pencil. If I made a mistake in writing.....I crossed through it and continued on. I didn't see my work being worthy of being reviewed later like Einstein, Charles Darwin, or Micheal Faraday. Notes in my opinion....were simply notes.
Now, I realize some guys are different and have maintained their 10th grade science notebook or their 2nd year engineering class notebook from college.....thirty years ago no less. But generally.....notes are worthless at the end of the semester and the test cycle.
What Claxton is suggesting is that we simply readjust our perception of material we've written and not feel ashamed by mistakes. Take a side-step.....admit imperfection......learn while in the progress of things.
We might as well admit that half the things we have today....came from mistakes.
I'm one of those folks who has to live around Germans. In German culture.....the eraser mentality is a big deal. Every single kid and student carries around a hefty eraser, and pencil.....along with six color-type pens/markers, a ruler, and various tools of marking a paper in a special way. In some ways....it's fanatical in the behavior thing. I'm presently in the middle of a German language class (3rd day) and the teacher ripped me up for not having a pencil today (yesterday came the criticism of not having a yellow and green marker on my person).
The odds that Claxton will have any success? Zero. The eraser cartel and control freaks will go berserk when this comes up in class. You are dissolving thousands of eraser jobs.....if you got rid of this standard in society.
