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

By and large, it is a good way of teaching to commend righteous behaviors and overlook wrong or ones. But taking a close look at the conclusion that states it is the best way, the claim is too arbitrary and oversimplified.

First and foremost, the scope and range of teaching is so broad that there is no universal solution to perform the teaching tasks. Thus, it is obviously unsatisfying to conclude that appraisal of good deeds and neglect of negative ones is the best approach to teach. For example, in fields of experimental disciplines such as chemistry and pharmacology, pointing out the wrong acts in performing an experiment is at least as important as, if not more pivotal than, praising those correct manipulations, because any careless action in the experiment may lead to catastrophic consequences such as explosion of a chemical reaction or death of the animal or patient. This contradicts the assertion since there are bad or wrong actions that should not and cannot be ignored and had better be corrected immediately.

In addition, the effectiveness and excellence of teaching should be valued by the learning process and knowledge acceptance of the students. Since every person is different and teaching is better tailored to each individual to achieve best results, no uniform approach and method can satisfy every student’s need. For instance, a pupil with high self-esteem should be cautioned when he does something wrong in case he becomes too arrogant and belittles everyone else. On the contrary, one who lacks confidence may need more appraisal and encouragement to help him better build self-confidence.

Furthermore, overdue commendation and ignorance of negative deeds sometimes may cause serious problems. Numerous examples abound in our everyday life. For instance, Li Tianyi, the son of a famous Chinese artist Li Shuangjiang, grows up in all applauds and no criticisms. Once the champion of a national piano competition and a rising star in China, he was put in prison in 2012 for raping a girl with his friends. This case is extreme, but it is a caution to us of the severe consequence of undue appraisals.

To sum up, one good way of teaching is to appraise positive deeds and neglect negative ones. However, the effect of this approach should not be overestimated and is far from conclusive. To obtain effective and positive learning effects, teachers can adopt diverse teaching philosophy and methods and should tailor their approaches to different students.