Strong and Wrong Versus Contrite and Right

I have had conversations with academic colleagues about the wisdom of admitting either error or that you do not know something in the classroom.  My own nightmare with this was in my first time through Article 2, a subject I thought I knew pretty well.  I was teaching it as an upper level class, and a number of the students had already had a thorough grounding in the basic contracts course. 

The gist of the advice is that as a new professor, or as one who otherwise does not convey strength and confidence, it is often better to be strong and wrong than to be right and contrite.  While we would always like to be strong and right, the fact is we all have brainfarts in front of the class.  I have the pleasure (this is not sarcastic) of teaching Article 9 and it can lose me sometimes.  Is it really the right answer not to say “oops, I was wrong; here’s the right answer.

This is a Straddling the Fence topic, because strong and wrong out in the practice, whether out-house or in-house, can never be the correct approach.