Forget schoolyard bullies, or oversized and under resourced classrooms. It turns out the biggest obstacle to your child’s future development when at school lies in the hands of the humble eraser. That is, according to one scientist anyway.
Guy Claxton, a cognitive scientist and professor, visited London’s prestigious King’s College recently and had a lot to say about the misuse of erasers in education. Confused? Well, his reasoning is actually not that complex.
Claxton says that pupils need resilience and curiosity to succeed, and the use of erasers obstruct these qualities developing as they encourage students to rub out their mistakes rather than face them.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Claxton said, ” The eraser is an instrument of the devil because it perpetuates a culture of shame about error. It’s a way of lying to the world, which says, ‘I didn’t make a mistake. I got it right the first time.'”
“Instead, we need a culture where children are not afraid to make mistakes, they look at their mistakes and they learn from them, where they are continuously reflecting and improving on what they’ve done, not being enthralled to getting the right answer quickly and looking smart.
“They need to be interested in the process of getting the right answer because that’s what it is like in the big wide world. Out in the big wide world nobody is going to be following you around, marking your work, organising your time for you, in the 21st century you are going to be the designer, the architect, the curator of your own learning.”
Claxton argues that while we like to tell children mistakes are a good thing that they can learn from, by arming them with tools like erasers we are not showing them that it is acceptable to trip up sometimes. By making mistakes, and leaving them on the page, they are apparently better able to build character and bounce back from setbacks.
The only question left is: will you be leaving out ‘rubber’ from your next stationary shopping list?
