The Right to Corrections
Tiburcio Espericueta Reyna was the first professor to give me a snitch at the university. Others had done it in previous years, but I don’t remember a reprimand that embarrassed me so much.
I had just made an argument about Thomas Kuhn and scientific revolutions. I did so with full conviction of my reasons, but I was wrong.
“Paniagua, that is nonsense. Kuhn means this, this, and this,” he said, waving his hands in the air, looking worried about what Kuhn would think from his grave.
He was precise, and it took me the rest of the class to recover my usual skin color. I always remembered what he explained. I wouldn’t say I liked the way he corrected me, but I recognize that it was effective. I also know that when you are learning, not all feedback comes wrapped in cotton wool, and realizing you are wrong can be uncomfortable.
Other teachers followed Tiburcio and did their job of correcting me — I have referred in previous entries of my blog to my dear teacher Louis Meandly, who was also not shy about saying, “That’s bullshit” but softened the nag with a sense of humor, making the medicine less of a burden.
As a teacher, I try to return the gesture (not the trauma) and correct my students when I notice a mistake in the argument, a constructive act that they sometimes return to me when I mess up. In this way, class by class, we knead ourselves like potters, constructing our thinking through linguistic games.
It worries me that, in recent years, students don’t like feedback. Not all of them, of course. I also recognize that with age, I have lost my diplomatic skills: I make faces, open my eyes, and maybe don’t say, “That’s bullshit,” but sometimes I interpret it with my body language.
I see behind this feeling (that of students who get hurt by someone else’s critique) the assumption that learning should always have a soft and happy landing. Better still, that learning is not frictionless: I have never heard anything so stupid.
To learn, you have to make mistakes; if you cannot notice the error, the teacher must point it out to you. That’s what they are paid to do, as well as to create the route and the setting for you to make a mistake and learn from it. The classroom is a safe place to say stupid things, but someone has to point them out, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
Learning will only sometimes be smooth. In my classes, I often say that education should be exciting, but panic, frustration, disgust, and annoyance are also emotions.
When I take a class (to be a teacher, I must study consistently), I expect to exercise my right to correction. I hope someone will let me know if I am making a mistake to avoid unpleasantness out there in the world. In this way, the teacher expresses his commitment to me, “I won’t let this happen to you out there,” which is what this gesture represents.
So, when you take a class, and the teacher corrects you (as long as it is with reason and respect; otherwise, they are probably a jerk who needs limits), remember that you have the right to corrections. Go for it!
