[originaltext] Let Children Learn to Judge Their Own

Let Children Learn to Judge Their Own Work
       A child learning to talk does not learn by being corrected all the time. If corrected too much, he will stop talking. He notices a thousand times a day the difference between the language he uses and the language those around him use. Bit by bit, he makes the necessary changes to make his language like other people’s. In the same way, when children learn to do all the other things, such as walking, running, climbing, and riding a bicycle, they learn to do them without being taught. Rather, they compare those performances with those of more skilled people, and slowly make the needed changes. But in school we never give a child a chance to find out his own mistakes for himself. We act as if we thought that he would never notice a mistake unless it was pointed out to him. Soon he becomes dependent on the teacher.