What do you say to a student who is taking every opportunity to learn and extend their competence and understanding but who, as a consequence, is accumulating a catalogue of hard-won errors? Most especially, how do you encourage them and convincingly explain the less than excellent grade you've given the work they've produced? If it’s true that we learn from our mistakes, what sense does it make to discourage failure and to commend success? Whilst the commendation of success necessarily acknowledges the overcoming of error, it also tends to encourage conservatism by focussing attention on what can be achieved with certainty rather than what might not; between what is a genuine challenge and what is merely difficult.
“The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” -Michelangelo
