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

I agree with the author's proposition partially: more with the first half of the recommendation than the latter half. That teaching is better by praising for positive actions, as logical as it sounds, is also observed from the facts and experiences. Though, it might not be the best way of teaching. Also ignoring the negative actions, more than helping, is more often than not detrimental to the teaching and learning process.

Human nature, as it is, is to like admiration and adulation. When a person is praised for some of his actions he is likely to get motivated and encouraged to work more in the same direction and further. This effect on a human mind or also a pet can be leveraged to teach something quickly and efficiently. Praise serves to boost the learner's confidence. Moreover, it also instills inspiration to do better for more and more praise. This can well be exemplified by offering chocolates in classroom for each right answer and appropriate questions raised in the lecture hall. Well, this might not seem so effective on its face, but it works and is employed even by the professor of Stanford Prof.Mehran Sahami where students seem to actively participate in the class.

The latter half of the recommendation where the author suggests that the negative actions of the learner should be ignored seems to be based on his assumption that pointing down the negative action might discourage the student and might serve to dissuade him from carrying on further. There is a possibility that if a student is shown his mistake he is likely to get discouraged or maybe offended and this may be detrimental to his learning, however, ignoring the negative actions is going to do no good. It is only when we learn of our mistakes, we can rectify them and improve our learning. They say we learn a lot from our mistakes, but this learning comes only when we dare to recognize the flaws, face them and by and by successfully eliminate the flaws and prevent them from recurring. Had our insouciant attitude towards our mistakes beneficial, there would be no need of reviews of test answers, follow-ups and practice sessions and not least, a law system to punish the criminals to teach them righteousness.

However, it is important how a person should be told about his negative actions and how one should deal with criticism. In every school we find teachers of different types: a teacher who is sullen and is disparaging in his manner towards students' mistakes seems to be less liked and discouraging whereas a teacher who calls for students' attention towards their mistake in order to exhort and show them ways to overcome the mistakes and making them believe that they can always, does his job of teaching better.

Thus, we can say praising someone may encourage the learner for learning but over-praising may lead to complacence in learner's mind. Also scolding and chiding may discourage a student but making people aware about their mistakes is the only way that can help them improve. Considering this, praising a positive action is necessary oftentimes and also pointing out mistakes, however, when and how it should be done is a matter of prudence.