erasing the work

How does a child feel about being corrected?

Nathaniel was a second-grader in my class, and the year had recently just begun. We were working on an arithmetic question on the board. He seemed proud that he could give an answer to the question. He worked it out on the board and came back to his seat. The answer was not correct.

After some discussion with the students, I indicated that his answer could not be right, and I erased it. Nathaniel stared hard at the board for a few moments and then could not hold back his feelings. He hunched over and started crying. I felt terrible! I tried to comfort him, rubbed his back, reassured him that he had done a good job. Later I mentioned the incident to his mother, wondering if he had gone home upset. She looked blank, and said he never brought it up.

My approach to teaching math has evolved since that time, and I now use class discussion to allow children to correct themselves. I tell them to say “I disagree” instead of “that’s wrong.”

I think I learned two important things from that experience with Nathaniel. The first is that young children attach great importance to the physical results of their work. In a way, the work and the physical component are identical, as if by writing a love letter, I were actually embodying my love in the letter. The second is somewhat deeper: Children have very private lives, in which their struggles may go quite unnoticed by people close to them. Who can say what passions and inspirations are passing silently through their hearts? It takes a perceptive mind to penetrate the mystery of a child’s thoughts.

: : : Children feel attached to what they create. They can be very sensitive to the judgments of others.

make the truth your friend

Elmer was in kindergarten, and he had some difficulty holding to the truth. He would employ lying as a simple tactic for getting what he wanted. He would then look at me with a kind of guileless, tentative expression. It was like a grand experiment of his.

The truth is a fascinating thing for children—or rather, they are fascinated by what is not the truth. They gradually come to realize that other people—even adults—often don’t know what is in their minds. But how do we then keep a child from careening down the path of shameless deception and self-gratification? The answer to that could create a whole culture.

Here is what I did not do: tell Elmer that lying is arbitrarily bad, threaten him with punishment, show him anger, ignore what happened, or appeal to any outside authority (God included). What I did do has stayed with me as a helpful response to a child.

I asked, “Elmer, do you think if you tell the truth, the truth will become your friend?” He said no. I went on, “If you do make the truth your friend, it will always help you. But if you make the truth your enemy, it will always fight against you. I think it’s better to have the truth as your friend.” He agreed. Elmer was a child who liked to have friends.

I believe the only real moral guidance children can receive is based on choice. They are going to find out soon enough that they really do have a choice, regardless of what fears we put into their heads along the way. If we deny them choice, we become their prison wardens. If we grant them choice and leave them to discover the consequences, we become cruel onlookers. I try to explain to them in neutral, illustrative ways how a choice is likely to result, and make them aware that goodness is really up to them.

there’s a tornado coming

I was at a park with a group of families for a campout once, and the weather was a little wet and stormy, with even a tornado warning. As usual at such an event, there was a lot of running around and excited shouting. Ariel, seven years old, came abruptly up to her parents, with whom I was talking at the moment. I didn’t really know her, although I knew she would be my student the next fall. She said, “There’s going to be a tornado!”

I asked her, “Are you scared about it, or are you excited?” She looked at me blankly for a few moments and then dashed away from us.

Ariel’s expression did not give much idea how she felt about her news, and so prompted my question. She seemed more interested in the effect on other people of the idea of a tornado than on herself. When I asked that question, maybe she didn’t really know the answer. It’s good for adults not to predict or assume what a child feels without some clear signal from the child. It takes many years for children to understand what they feel and what feelings are. (Let’s be honest; sometimes adults are still wondering.)

What children do have that many adults don’t is a fresh point of view. I can remember many times in my life when I witnessed people’s reactions to something and then came to regard the thing as wonderful or terrible. I’m very glad to allow children to develop their own judgment when there is no reason for me to impose my own.