Learning from mistakes

Training in other people’s errors is largely similar to training on samples, only errors act as a hint “as not is necessary”.

Learning from your own mistakes

A child learns from his mistakes if negative reinforcement follows his mistakes. But if you personally give this negative reinforcement, the child can distract from his mistake and take care of you, who is already an enemy to him. If the negative reinforcement comes from something impersonal, there is no one to be angry with. And at the same time, no one forbids the educator to create just those circumstances that will teach the child in this way.

Russo writes:

Not only would I not try to protect Emil from bruises, but I would even be very dissatisfied if he never hurt himself and grew up without knowing pain. If a child falls to the floor, he will not break his legs; if he strikes himself with a stick, he does not break his arm; if he grabs a sharp knife, he squeezes it weakly and cuts himself shallowly. Suffering is the first thing he must learn, and it is the skill he will need the most.

The freedom which I grant to my pupil rewards him richly for the slight inconveniences to which I subject him. Here are the little rascals playing in the snow: they are blue, stiff, barely able to move their fingers. It is up to them to go and warm up, but they don’t; if they are forced to do this, they will feel the cruelty of coercion a hundred times stronger than the cruelty of the cold.

Forced Error Learning

Learning from your own mistakes can be helped by strengthening the impact of the mistake. It is one thing to allow a child to get acquainted with the forces of nature and learn to obey what happens in life anyway. Another thing is when the educator begins to use the forces of nature, when he needs to lead his pupil to something. Natural negative reinforcements can be artificially reinforced, forced, so that learning occurs more efficiently.

Building the Negative Consequences of Unwanted Behavior

If the undesirable behavior of the child is considered to be erroneous behavior, to be considered a mistake, then the closer the relationship between the undesirable behavior and the negative consequences that the child receives for it, the better. The child gets the opportunity to learn from the consequences of his own behavior, from his own mistakes. Gradually, he learns responsibility in doing so. See →

Defeats as lessons

It is not always possible to win. If you lose, it is useful to remember the words of the chief vintner from the movie «A Good Year» when he addressed his growing nephew: «A man should accept his defeat with the same grace with which he celebrates a victory. The time will come and you will understand that it is not victories that teach a person — it is losses that become the source of wise thoughts, including the one that it is much more pleasant to win. Life is like this, defeats are inevitable, and we must try so that they do not become the rule … «. See →