Mistakes Paradox

   

Harlan Mistakes Paradox

    At Oakfield High School of Greenstone, the rain often drummed against the windows of the teachers’ lounge as if it wanted to join their debates. That afternoon, Mr. Harlan, philosophy teacher, and Ms. Carter, psychology teacher, stayed behind after classes, their voices weaving through the quiet corridors.

“I don’t know how to give feedback anymore,” Carter admitted, laying a pile of essays on the table. “When I mark all the wrong aspects, some students shut down, others fix things like machines without understanding the whole picture, so without really learning. If I hold back, though, I feel like I’m cheating them.”

Harlan smiled faintly. “That’s not cheating—it’s strategy. Sometimes, showing only a few mistakes is more powerful than listing them all.”

Carter tilted her head. “How so?”

“Think of it as a paradox,” Harlan said, warming to his theme. “When you underline just one or two clear errors and give the proper answer, the willing student doesn’t stop there. They reason through it. They notice patterns. They begin to see what else is wrong without being told. It’s a quiet form of growth—implicit, self-discovered.”

He reached for an essay on top of the pile. “Take my student Lydia, for instance. Last week I corrected only one paragraph of her paper, pointing out her misuse of definitions. She came back with the entire essay revised, all the definitions reshaped in her own words, as if she had seen the thread that tied them all together.”

Carter nodded slowly. “Yes, but then, like my student Martin. If I only circle one mistake, he just patches that one and hands it back as if nothing else matters. And Eva—when I marked every mistake in red, she handed the paper back blank. She told me it was easier to start over than to face so much failure.”

“The others,” Harlan sighed, “either correct mindlessly, mistake by mistake, or feel overwhelmed and give up. So this method works like a filter. It shows you who truly wants to learn. Those who care will use the small correction as a lantern to illuminate the whole page.”

Carter looked at the essays again. “So you’re saying that withholding some feedback is, paradoxically, the better feedback.”

“Exactly,” Harlan replied. “It’s not the number of marks on the page that teaches, but the depth of the student’s response to them.”

Later, when this view spread among staff, some called it unfair, even negligent. Yet no one could fully disprove Harlan. They all remembered students who had thrived on just a hint, a nudge, while others had drowned in red ink.

The next morning, Carter decided to test the paradox in her own class. She handed back essays, each marked with just one or two corrections. The students’ faces told the story before a word was spoken.

Lydia studied the margin note carefully, then began scribbling on the rest of her paper, flipping back through pages, quietly tracing the pattern for herself.

Martin gave a short sigh, crossed out the underlined sentence, rewrote it, and leaned back in his chair as if the job was done.

Eva frowned at the single red mark on her essay. “Is this all?” she asked cautiously.

 “Yes,” Carter replied. “But think about what it means for the rest.”

 Eva hesitated, then opened her notebook, slowly comparing sections. For the first time, she seemed less defeated and more curious.

By the end of class, Carter felt a strange relief. Some students had risen to the challenge, others had not—but the room felt alive in a way it hadn’t when every page was drowned in red ink.

That night, as she walked home by the Gosp River, Carter thought of the small experiment. She wondered if perhaps the river itself was like feedback: sometimes gentle ripples guided stones into new places, while a flood could wash everything away.

In Greenstone Town, it seemed even mistakes had to be measured.

Toni Font, Aberdeen 29/09/2025