Is fear stopping you from learning?

Hey guys! Welcome to another Clive's English Corner post!

At some point in our lives we all experience fear. It is a natural mechanism meant to protect us from getting hurt physically or emotionally. Even though long gone are the days where this instinct could be what saved us from a life and death situation, it is still prevalent in our modern society. However, we now experience it in some activities that are not necessarily life and death ones, for the most part; but our brains are wired to make us avoid situations where we can get emotionally hurt. Learning is not an exception to this.

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The way our educational system used to work and still to this day, as we discussed ->HERE<-, pressures us to do things perfectly. Our parents usually expect us to have straight A scores, and our instructors, some of them at least, act like they take pleasure of student’s failure instead of showing support and understanding when a student commits a mistake. On top of that, peer pressure is fierce. We are consistently afraid of not being up to par or surpass our classmates’ performance.

This enormous burden can be a great obstacle in our learning process. Take a trip down memory lane and try to think about your classroom environment in high school. There was probably a class clown, one or two outstanding performers in almost every subject, the ones who just did not care about school, and most of us were better in some subjects than others. Now, whenever it was time to participate in class, whether it was to go and perform a task in front of the class or answer the teacher's question from your seat; was a terrifying experience. Why? Because we sure did not want to "look stupid" in front of our facilitator or fellow students. All of this, instead of encouraging something essential in the learning process such as making mistakes and learning from them, makes us try to always be perfect and restrain ourselves from participating in group classes.

It is important to note that there are some good aspects of the legacy educational system. For starters, it encourages excellence and hard work, and it incentivizes competition. On the other hand, it hinders our natural desire to try new things without fear messing up. Toddlers or young children could not care less if they slip up because they are mostly in full learning mode, but as we grow older the harsh corrections or scolding we get while erring slowly scar us and make us self-conscious of what others may think.

Something has to change starting from parents and teachers. It is important to let children know that making a few mistakes is ok, as long as they learn from them. Moreover, it is essential to insist on the importance of experimentation. Every important breakthrough in science and technology has been achieved by trial and error, and the learning process is no different from this. It is from blunders that we learn the most.

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More importantly, it is up to us to get over this obstacle. Yes, we may have some baggage due to misguided educational practices; nonetheless, it is up to us to not let these past experiences prevent us from daring. Fearing embarrassment over being wrong is completely pointless. Therefore, when it comes to language learning you should be happy to make mistakes because, most likely, it will be a great learning point. So, stop letting fear paralyze you from trying to speak or to write. Just go for it and you will only get better and better at it.