I was driving in my car today and listening to people on NPR talk about the need for women to take risks in order to improve their status in the work place and it got me thinking about our education system. 

Shouldn’t we teach our students to take risks. Far to often we teach students to blindly follow rules and do what they are told. We put them in neat little boxes and punish them if they even begin to break out of their box. Instead shouldn’t we teach our students that it is okay to take risks. Without risks innovation and changes in policy would never take place. Some of the worlds most revered people were risk takers: Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth. Deep learning just cannot take place if someone does not take the risk of trying to do things differently.

Given everything I said, how can we make the world safer for young risk takers? Some people suggest creating a safe learning enviornment helps promote risk taking. Others believe that challenging students is the way to go. What do you think? Should we be promoting risk taking in school? Why or why not? Please give examples of how you created a risk taking environment in your classroom if you do.