Please review my GRE issue essay.

[Grewal]

The best way to teach is to praise positive actions and ignore negative ones.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.

 

The prompt says that the best way to teach is to praise positive actions and ignore negative ones. Now many might say that to spare the rod is to spoil the child, but the fact is that positive reinforcement can result in remarkable improvement in a student. This essay will discuss why the best way to teach is to praise positive actions and give examples in support of this claim.

In education, as we all know, if you keep criticizing the student and not praise his or her achievements, it can lead to discouragement and in extreme cases, can cause the student to lose interest in studies. This has been proven time and time again. Therefore, in the developed world, there is heavy emphasis on positive reinforcement and building children’s confidence as in formative years, a negative or traumatic school experience can be detrimental to a person’s mental health. On the other hand, the developing world still seems to be stuck in the past, with teachers sticking to old hectoring tactics even resorting to beating when the child has made mistakes. They believe that if children are complimented for their achievements, they will complacent or that they will become arrogant. One can only witness how detrimental it has been to the developing world’s progress.

Moreover, it is evident how the West has implemented this positive reinforcement in the field of sports to its advantage; it is arguably producing the best sportsmen in the world. A coach would typically focus on what the athletes are doing well and help them build on these successes. Most athletes are taught the power of visualisation, wherein they would imagine how well they would play in the game before it begins, thereby helping them get into a positive state of mind and alleviate stress and anxiety.

Even in performance art, the teacher would often stress on the artistes’ strengths, accentuating them in order to get the best out of them. For instance, while casting, directors or casting directors would only choose those actors for a particular role, who can naturally play it, as in they will only cast a serious man in a serious role or an artful person in a cunning role.

This being said, one can understand how totally ignoring negative actions can be disastrous. So one needs to be cautious in not totally ignoring negative actions, how else will a person learn from his or her mistakes. But at the same time it is a common mistake to lay all the focus on rectifying faults insead of building on strengths or positive actions. Thus as we can see how positive reinforcement can help people realize their potential, the best way, indeed, is to praise positive actions and ignore negative ones as much as one can.