Grammar Gazette- Issue 1, 2012

Towards a culture of failure continued from previous page

Is 21st century technology affecting the way we think?

The academic and personal benefits of adopting a positive attitude towards error are clear. There is another reason to embrace our mistakes and failures: it will leave us happier than if we spend our time in the futile, stressful, and miserable task of error-avoidance. The correlation between learning from failure and being happy was clear to Churchill, who defined success as ‘the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm’. William James mused that: Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf (1890). Kathryn Schulz offers a more considered rationale for enjoying rather than wallowing in our errors. She argues that being wrong involves a mismatch between our expectation (that we are right) and actuality (that we are not) and that this incongruity is also the basis of most jokes and humour. We laugh most often because the situation or gag does not end the way we thought it would. If we can laugh at our own failures as much as we do at those of others, we will not only smile more, but learn more too. Schulz suggests that: ... if we want to keep laughing as much as we currently do (or more) we must also keep bumbling into the gap between the world as we think it is and the world as it turns out to be; we must keep on getting things wrong (2010, p.325–326).

It is hard to think of a time where aspects of daily life did not involve some form of new technology. Facebook, iPods, iPads, Skype, and Twitter are terms that have become part of common vernacular and have allowed us in the twenty-first century to do things that our grandparents may never have dreamed possible.

Of course,what we consider ‘new technology’ is not new to teenagers today, it is simply part of life so it is hard for them to imagine a time when they could not ‘google it’. It is easy to point to the advantages of modern technology but, as educators and carers for young people, we must be acutely aware of the integral role that technology has in their lives. Technology is shaping adolescents to think differently. Neuroscientists tell us that the brain grows and develops as it encounters a range of experiences and environments over time. Baroness Susan Greenfield, Director of the Institute for the Future of the Mind, states that brain cells are enriched and work harder in challenging and interesting environments. This allows the brain to make more connections, grow more branches and lead to greater personal significance of the information through its processing (2011). The environment that technology has created is a heightened sensory world of colours and images jumping quickly from one scene to the next with the click of a mouse. The impact that engaging in this type of environment is significant on the young mind and, as Greenfield (2011) asserts, this has led to shorter

Mr Stephen Woods Director of English

References

Burns, J. (2012). Failure week at top girls school to build resilience. BBC News . Retrieved February 5, 2012, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ education-16879336.

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: the new psychology of success . New York: Ballantine.

Harford, T. (2011). Adapt: why success always starts with failure. London: Little, Brown.

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology . New York: Holt.

Leiden University (2008, September 25). Learning from mistakes only works after age 12, study suggests. ScienceDaily . Retrieved February 12, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/09/080925104309.htm.

Schulz, K. (2010). Being wrong: adventures in the margin of error . London: Portobello.

The benefit of getting things wrong. (2010). Educational Leadership , 68(1). Retrieved November 6, 2011, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/ educational-leadership/oct10/vol68/num02/Double-Take.aspx.

19 Grammar Gazette Autumn 2012