Saving face: Blockading self-learning and youth entrepreneurship

NOT admitting one’s own mistakes is a deadly enterprise. Not pointing another’s mistakes is a lethal undertaking which is costly in the long-run. There are many good constructive ways of pointing another person’s mistakes without belittling or degrading his/her morale. One key feature of ‘mian’ (saving face) is the whole idea of not admitting mistakes and not publicly humiliating another person when he/she has committed a blunder. The later I find quite sensible but the first is the bitter pill to swallow and quite indigestible.

As I have read more about the Asian cultural values, I’ve come to realise the emphasis placed on education especially when it comes to not making mistakes. Asian students have been conditioned to be correct. There’s a price to be paid when one abberates.

In last Sunday’s article I made a connection between the education system of a society and the cultural values that society upholds. This can even go as far as complimenting political ideologies that these societies are founded on.

American kids are taught to speak up and be more proactive to compliment the values of freedom and democracy whilst the Asian kids will be taught to be quiet and listen to compliment values of saving face and harmony.

And I think this is the trouble when the education system has to change to address the changing values. Changing education values mean obliterating some of the cultural values not deemed fit for the changing times.

There are two options, either to change the education system alone while retaining the cultural values, which is very difficult or changing the education system and also changing the cultural values which arduous.

Now let’s face it, making mistakes is a human nature. I am not applauding it but I am merely indicating the obvious truth about you and me. We make mistakes, we correct them, and we keep on growing. This is the normal conduct of the universe.

I know you will agree with me that we shouldn’t make mistakes at the expense of just making mistakes, but we should strive to change and learn from our mistakes and improve instead of repeating them again and again.

I’ve been told that in Chinese schools there can be so much rigidness in the learning environment that students cannot contribute in class in fear of being wrong which most of the times translate into punishment.

I am familiar with this experience. I remember my mathematics teacher of grade three who used to punish the class whenever we got answers wrong. His teaching style has negatively affected me to-date and I would be proud to tell him when I see him again.

I believe education system should have the room to accommodate mistakes as part of the learning process, instead of punishing students whenever they commit one. Mistakes are engines of independent learning. How can we know the right thing if we don’t recognize the wrong thing?

The role of education is to shape lives and create pathways that students can follow to become good and responsible citizens in the future. The role of education is to utilize mistakes committal as an ingredient for learning, in and outside the classroom.

The fear of not committing mistakes has serious shortcomings when it comes to independent learning. In independent learning, the student is motivated to take the first step towards learning with the lecturer playing the role of the facilitator.

But this cannot materialize if the student is paralyzed with the fear of being wrong and inadequate. I didn’t take the first step toward learning and liking mathematics due to the fear of making mistakes. Just the image of punishment was enough to send the mathematics books to the shelves.

Part of independent learning comes from appreciating what one is learning. Fear clouds our appreciation for studying. Time dedicated to studying becomes an excruciating experience with endless tears and sighs.

Being a salsa dancer, one important element of dancing is losing oneself in the rhythm of the song. Most people cannot be lost into the rhythm because they’re afraid they’re doing it wrong. Our friend alcohol has come in handy to assist us to feel the rhythm blindly.

The fear of committing mistakes has another repercussion towards entrepreneurship. One element of entrepreneurship is the motivation of taking risks and trying out new things. But if we’ve paralyzed our students from trying new things, how can they become entrepreneurs?

No great leaders have never committed mistakes and no great businesspersons have never made bad decisions. Donald Trump — the man I wouldn’t trade for a father for personal reasons — faced major financial setbacks in his career. But surely he didn’t lose face.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not against the whole idea of face saving. I am just against the element that emphasizes on not committing mistakes. I regard the other elements like the one of not humiliating others in public to be a good cultural practice.

Then we need to think twice on whether the element that fears committing mistakes should be embraced or changed. Do the global pressures provide us with the room for altering this practice? Can the Asian society work towards instilling a different morality in its students that says ‘it’s okay to make mistakes and learn from them?’

And I think tertiary institutions have the issue to address. How do they deal with the students who don’t contribute in class due to the fear of committing mistakes? How do they create better leaders who are risk takers and entrepreneurial in their work?