Everyone is imperfect, yet as I observe each generation of students pass through my classroom there seems to be a perceivable rise in "perfectionism" - not so much from parents, but from the students themselves. This is detrimental to developing a solid foundation for creative designers. Plus, it is a false notion based upon a rigid, conditional mindset. Creative thinking must make room for imperfection and making mistakes along the path of improvement. I consider making mistakes as being different from mismanagement and recklessness... and I realize the irony of the question; there is no perfect answer. But, are we teachers perpetuating perfectionism? What about the value of making mistakes in teaching and learning?
In conducting the teaching-learning process, teachers must ensure that students learn from their own mistakes.
Strategic failures are not products of sheer mistakes or not clinging to quality ideas as we see many lazy students do. They were carefully engineered 'bolts' that couldn't fix the proposed 'nuts'! As such, they could remedy other problems in our society. These are pardonable mistakes in research.
Granted, we must teach our students to be very hardworking, learning great lessons from their mistakes to bring out new things. As for shoddiness and laziness that leads to unpardonable mistakes, we must not entertain them in our students, no, we shouldn't for the love of science and their own academic development.
We do not necessarily need to punish students for making mistakes, however, we should not appear to reward them for making mistakes. If our pedagogy is all embracing we should not dwell on error correction only, that is a marginalizing practice that has been found not to teach skills in any significant way. Rather, we should insist always on making the skills and foundational elements that are lacking and their impartation to the student our focus; error correction based on this foundation would yield the desired results but this approach would always take time, energy and dedication.
In the teaching and learning process, 'Failure' is a strong word for anyone to accept especially when there is effort involved. Making a person realise the mistake helps them to avoid the mistake. Education is for innovation and experimentation which should unknowingly take the shape of perfection. Education should be encouraging than injecting the fear of failure.
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