Have you heard the Mistakes Myth? It’s in two parts. First this myth says we can't learn without mistakes; then it adds that we should embrace our mistakes. Well up to a point…
The first part is plain wrong – or, as one might call it, “a mistake”. It seems obvious that it is possible in theory at least that you can learn any process by following it correctly without mistakes. Whether it’s tying a shoelace, playing a sonata on the piano, or even assembling flat-pack shelving. You probably won't get it right first time, but you just might. And in order to do it a second time, you definitely need to do it a first time. If it did happen to go right first time, and your memory was functioning well, you could be said to have learned how to do it – and would prove that to be the case by getting it right on each subsequent occasion.
The first part is plain wrong – or, as one might call it, “a mistake”. It seems obvious that it is possible in theory at least that you can learn any process by following it correctly without mistakes. Whether it’s tying a shoelace, playing a sonata on the piano, or even assembling flat-pack shelving. You probably won't get it right first time, but you just might. And in order to do it a second time, you definitely need to do it a first time. If it did happen to go right first time, and your memory was functioning well, you could be said to have learned how to do it – and would prove that to be the case by getting it right on each subsequent occasion.
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