The Core Knowledge Blog

When I was in kindergarten, my teachers were worried about me because I never brought my paintings home. When my parents asked me why I didn’t, I told them that the paintings weren’t good. This horrified the teachers, who had marked “Great!” on every single one of them (I can still see the handwriting). I knew the paintings weren’t great, and didn’t know how to make them better. No one at school was willing to teach me.

Fast-forward thirty-eight years to a professional development session on the arts in education. We are provided with long sheets of chart paper and instructed to trace and then portray each other, in groups of two or three. We have about thirty minutes to complete this slipshod activity. When this is done, we hang the portraits around the room and circulate for a “gallery walk.” We are given Post-its for making observations, not criticisms. Observation is greater than judgment, we are told. I feel ill. My horrible drawing must now endure cheery “observations.” I want to go home.

Extremist doctrines tumble upon teachers continually, in education programs, training sessions, and so-called literature. Today I will examine a recurring shibboleth: “Teachers should not correct student errors explicitly.” Trainers and administrators discourage correction for at least three reasons: (1) they are concerned for the students’ self-esteem and self-celebration; (2) they believe that correction could exacerbate existing inequities in the classroom; and (3) they are anxious about the difficulties and uncertainties inherent in correction.

I have dealt with anti-correction dogma on numerous occasions. I have been told not to mark up a student’s sacrosanct compositions, but to write comments on post-its (which, of course a student is entitled to throw away). On one occasion, the facilitator of a PD session said, “As a constructivist I don’t believe in telling a student, ‘that’s right,’ because that would invalidate another student’s answer.” I have visited classes with “Socratic Seminars” or “cooperative learning” in which the student discussions got muddled and the teacher refused to intervene.

If such incidents were happenstance, we could take them in stride. Sadly, we can find plenty of anti-correction sentiment in the official websites. The New York City Department of Education’s “Balanced Literacy Overview” makes the child the supreme author and authority: “During writing workshop, children rehearse, plan, draft, revise, or edit their writing. While students write in a variety of genres that are generally in accordance with the unit of study, topics are usually chosen by the child. With this approach, children do not usually write about books; instead, they write their own books! At the end of a month-long unit of study, children’s writing is published and celebrated.” Nothing here explicitly prohibits teachers from correcting students; but the teacher’s ability to correct is severely compromised when the students lack a common curricular focus and when celebration looms over the process.

The spirit of celebration at the expense of accuracy extends into mathematics. In its January 2008 Position Paper on Equity, the NCTM states: “In the classroom, teachers must encourage students to share their thinking, listen to others, and support and contribute to the community’s learning. Different solutions, interpretations, and approaches that are mathematically sound must be celebrated and integrated into class deliberations about problems. All members of the classroom group must accept the responsibility to engage with and support one another throughout the learning experience.” Again, there is no rule against correction—but the emphasis on “different solutions” inhibits the teaching of a correct or preferred solution.

Anti-correctional attitudes make their way (uncorrected) even into professional journals. In “What’s Wrong With Oral Grammar Correction” (1999), John Truscott writes, without irony, “Oral correction poses overwhelming problems for teachers and for students; research evidence suggests that it is not effective; and no good reasons have been offered for continuing the practice. The natural conclusion is that oral grammar correction should be abandoned.” I shall restrain myself from correcting the logical flaws in this statement, as well as the overuse of the passive voice.

Fortunately, such reckless statements and policies meet with challenge. Teachers, parents, students, and other community members speak out against the follies of “balanced literacy” and “constructivist math.” Lyster, Lightbown and Spada (1999) object roundly to Truscott’s article: “If Truscott had argued that it is difficult to know when, how, and what to correct in classroom L2 teaching, then we would have little to disagree with. However, he argues instead that because it is difficult, and because its effectiveness cannot always be demonstrated, ‘error correction’ should be abandoned.”

Precisely because correction is difficult, we should practice it actively and conscientiously. Few would insist that all errors should be corrected at all times, that there is always a right answer, or that correction is a simple matter. At times a teacher might refrain from correction in order to let a student read aloud without interruption, tackle a problem without distraction, or make a correction independently. A good teacher exercises continual and flexible discretion in this regard, and is still fallible. Yet perhaps we have become too fearful of our fallibility. Correction is not inherently cruel, unless the teacher makes it so. Students often crave precision: they correct each other (enthusiastically and often incorrectly) if the teacher does not correct them. A teacher’s correction offers the relief of clarity. Young people must learn to assess their own work, but this takes time, study, practice, and guidance.

A poem by Emily Dickinson seems apt here:

Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the culprit,—Life!

By the same token, surgeons have a professional obligation not to abandon the knife, lest they lose a life the other way. Between reckless hacking and throwing up the hands, the art of correction finds its place.

Diana Senechal teaches ESL and drama at a Brooklyn, NY middle school and holds a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale.