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

Teaching is one of the crucial responsibilities that in many cultures this job is recognized as a sacred one. There are many ways to teach, but here the author of the statement has made a hasty generalization in claiming that the best one is to admire the pupils for their positive points and not consider their negative ones.

To begin with, praising the positive points of the pupils has its own undeniable advantages. Pupils need to know that they are getting better in some things, or they are already strong on some issues. This gives them the confidence to keep on studying, and then they become interested in that field. We all have the same experience that when we cannot find any strong point in ourselves dealing with a field, we gradually become uninterested in pursuing that field and that may lead to drop-out of the pupils.

Furthermore, ignoring the negative performances of the students in some respects can help them. Piecemeal progress can take place when the students spend time in their studies without the need to repeatedly tell them their flaws. Otherwise, should we keep insisting on the negative points the student might lose the interest in the studying, and the insistence becomes an unintentional harassment.

However, the overdue insistence on the positive points can also have serious negative effects. Think about the students who are praised to the point that they assumes a false confidence. Students may be lulled into a false safety zone that would sooner or later shatters. Consider when we wrongly think that we did well on an exam. After realizing that our performance is far worse than we thought, we get shocked as we do not meet our expectations. In this case, we lose confidence in ourselves as we think that we are not as capable as we think, but it is not true. It is the defective teaching which is at fault.

Finally, to have a decent teaching educators should strike a balance between both methods of making aware the students of their own positive and negative points. Praising the positive parts, as discussed, can be quite destructive as the rebuking of the negative parts. The first causes the one to overestimate oneself and the latter causes the underestimation. But, the decent combination of showing both the negative and positive points, mirrors the students’ real performance. With their being aware of their educational status, neither students would be shocked when the results are not what they have expected, nor would they be hopeless to continue their study.

In short, the students need to have a realistic image of their educational statues in the education. A balanced teaching consists of informing the students of their positive and negative points, would stand a good stead for all levels of the education.