Feedback as a Breakfast of Champions
Nowadays, we live in a society that denies mistakes: mistakes are often seen as unacceptable. Children are often raised from a very early age with the belief that making a mistake is abnormal or even immoral. The past, and therefore the mistakes we make, cannot be changed. The only thing we can do about the past, whether it is good or bad, is to learn from it and bring our attention back to the present. Changing the future is not a matter of the future but of the present moment.
Mistake as a guide
If we keep thinking about the mistakes that have happened and we constantly remind children about them, it is very difficult for children to concentrate on the present. Petr Čech, one of the best football goalkeepers in the world, says, “Whatever the score is, it’s still zero in my head.” This means that regardless of the result of the activity, you must learn from it and immediately return to the status of “here and now “.
If one works only on their weaknesses, they will start to forget what they are good at. Synapses of the brain (the connection between the neurons), which represent talents, will eventually begin to fade and these neural connections will begin to gradually disintegrate. If Jaromir Jagr learned hockey up to a certain level and then did not play for two years, it would immediately be obvious from his performance. And that’s the way it works with any activity.
So, we can make up for our weaknesses by learning about them to a certain level, or we can let other people, for whom they are strengths, to handle them. It is important to deal disproportionately with what we are good at. To do what we are good at means that we will, of course, make much less mistakes.
From childhood, the world teaches us that mistakes are unacceptable. When a child comes to school, his rating drops. Grading is a 17th-century retreat from when the school system began to develop, and people thought that it was necessary to divide children into certain compartments. However, a mark does not tell the child anything, from the point of view of feedback, a verbal evaluation is much better. Through that the child learns what has been done well and, if not, what to do differently, so that the child can be encouraged. Although this type of feedback is allowed in the Czech Republic, only a few schools use it.
Types of parents and their feedback
That’s why we try to actively discuss our acquired knowledge about feedback with the parents in our courses and workshops. Based on parents’ approaches to children as part of the evaluation, we have created a classification. The first of these types is the parent “dictator”, a parent who constantly determines a child’s rules and boundaries – how to behave, what he or she did wrong, and so on. However, the restrictions the “dictator” creates are unilateral. The parent does not listen to the child, he or she is not interested in knowing how the child responds to the restrictions. Rules and boundaries are, of course, necessary both in education and communication with the child. But it is good for the parent to know how the child deals with them.
The second type of parent is the so-called “passive parent”. This is a parent who, alternatively, does not give the child any rules or limits, and does not listen to him. He is also far from the ideal parent.
Read more at: http://www.czechleaders.com/jan-muhlfeit/feedback-as-a-breakfast-of-champions
