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Science: Your Kid’s Not Special
OK, I may have taken a little bit of a shortcut there in the headline. What Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck is actually saying in the pages of Scientific American is that if you actually want your children to be special, just about the worst thing you can do is tell them that they already are:
Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 35 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.
I know, I know. Right now this sounds like one of those “different people have different skills” homilies that gets used to buck up the kid who eats paste. But that’s not what she’s saying:
The result plays out in children … who coast through the early grades under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.
Praising children’s innate abilities … reinforces this mind-set, which can also prevent young athletes or people in the workforce and even marriages from living up to their potential. On the other hand, our studies show that teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on “process” (consisting of personal effort and effective strategies) rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life.
In other words, you don’t tell your kids they’re smart. You tell them they have to work hard to be smart.
Explaining the results of a 2007 study she was involved with, Dweck writes:
As we had predicted, the students with a growth mind-set felt that learning was a more important goal in school than getting good grades. In addition, they held hard work in high regard, believing that the more you labored at something, the better you would become at it. They understood that even geniuses have to work hard for their great accomplishments. Confronted by a setback such as a disappointing test grade, students with a growth mind-set said they would study harder or try a different strategy for mastering the material.
The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with less regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests.
OK, we’re a political crowd around here, so I’m going to make the point that might be crass in other settings: don’t these fixed mind-set types sound a lot like the kind of people who staff the Obama White House (and the guy they work for)? Especially when Dweck later notes that “A belief in fixed intelligence also makes people less willing to admit to errors or to confront and remedy their deficiencies in school, at work and in their social relationships.”
We all know these types. They’ve mastered the acoustics of erudition — the smoke signals of the bien pensant — but, when confronted with evidence of their own shortcomings, it’s inevitably the fault of someone else or the vast impersonal forces of the universe. They don’t need to investigate what went wrong, because it can’t have had anything to do with them. They had this stuff mastered a priori. We’re governed by people whose every subpar finger painting exercise went up on the refrigerator (“That’s lovely, Barack, although I don’t get the reference to the proletariat.”)
I’m always of two minds when I see studies like this. On the one hand, we live an era of such slavish devotion to scientism that these kind of empirical studies may be the only way to smuggle intuitive insights back into the discussion. On the other, it’s sort of depressing that it takes years of research — and the attendant financing — just to win some grudging respect for what many of us regard as horse truth.
Published in General
I don’t think they are.
You’re not dealing with single dimensional constructs here. “Intelligence” has many dimensions, and most people are good at one particular type of intelligence.
The kind of intelligence that is going to get a hobo to live in the streets for many years, isn’t the same kind of intelligence that’s going to help an Apple software developer.
One of the nice things about a diverse free market economy is the scope offered for each individual to find his/her best available “fit.”
Or *make* that “fit”
I don’t know whether to be happy that my parents/teachers/supervisors *didn’t* do this. Or be depressed that the human potential/self-esteem dinosaurs are still out there…
To be fair, there’s a distinction between not having any children and not having any children you acknowledge.
Troy, I think this means that your kid is special.
Was waiting for this link!
So true – I myself do not have any children that I know of. Buy still waiting for *anyone* to comment on the amazing resemblance — look at Troy’s handsome visage right below that adorable tike!
Very interesting conversation. Work hard…work smart…you’re special…you have talent. Seems like there’s some truth in all these. And each is incomplete by itself. But, I’d like to interject another dimension for consideration, GOALS. Goals are like having our very own life thermostat. In a world that now proposes giving trophies to everyone on the team for just showing up, life has a rude awakening for those kids when they get a job or start a business. Free enterprise isn’t free and someone is always keeping score. I know the difficulty of explaining a “D” on my report card to a Dad who knew there was no explanation written anywhere that he would accept.
True, there are times when someone of less talent is the bosses fair haired boy/girl and they get special treatment. At that point one “get’s to” decide if you stay in that environment or update your resume and hunt for a better work environment. Or, you can decide to start your own business and take all the risk of being rewarded for your skills.
We can set goals according to what we are willing to work for. Forgive me, but Peter Robinson comes to mind. I would be willing to bet dinner for two, including the wine, that he has “worked hard”; “worked smart” (we can always work smarter, but life’s a journey and hopefully we are always learning,); thought he was special and talented because of successes along the way and the fact that there was one or more mentor(s) he respected that let him know he had talents/gifts that would serve him well if he put forth the effort to hone those talents. And, step-by-step, he seized the moment and built success upon success. He was willing to pay a high price to achieve his goals. Ditto Troy, iWc and many others who are part of this wonderful Ricochet community. People here more than many others appreciate risk/rewards, and merit. Unlike many sites that prefer to host “victims”, we can still decide what setting to turn our personal goal setting thermostat to.
I second what Vaquero wrote. From childhood through the first couple years of undergrad I was highly involved in music, and was often told by adults: “you’re so good!” “You’re going to be a professional musician!” It was certainly well-intentioned, and for all I know the adults were completely in earnest and meant what they said. However, I could tell it was nonsense. Kids may not be fully developed, but they know the difference between their Jr. High jazz band and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, or between their own essays and Ernest Hemingway. Unfortunately I believed them just enough to allow myself to slack off and not take full advantage of the opportunities I was afforded. The closest I came to actually working hard was when I came under the tutelage of a crusty old salt who only took me as his student on the precondition I swear I *wouldn’t* become a professional, and wasn’t shy about calling me out when I didn’t practice hard enough.
Being exposed to the pinnacle of a craft and then shown how to get there is infinitely preferable – and more honestly satisfying – than all the kind-hearted but empty flattery out there. This is where the idea of “potential” actually has value – though “talent” would be just as good a word. A good teacher (at least in the arts) are able to see the raw materials for greatness in students, and then help their students mold and hone their abilities towards greatness. Praise isn’t per se a bad thing – it’s when it’s unearned and not directed towards continued improvement and refinement that it becomes a problem.
And so then, we realize, all kids are special, in that they should be afforded this opportunity to mold themselves. Our job as adults is to help them identify their raw materials, and give them the tools to become the person they want to be. To open the doors so they may make positive contributions to the world.
Not just open the door, but actively lay out the path.
Some food for through:
Not terribly surprising. Those who have succeeded in life want to reify the system within which they succeeded, and those who have not succeeded in life want to cushion the blow of defeat.
I feel bad for those who quantify their success in terms of how many trophies they received as a child.
I get a participation trophy a work every two weeks, and I don’t have to beat anyone to win, just improve and deliver.
I always found trophies silly; they only tell you that you played better than the other teams, not that you’re actually good at anything.
Here’s what I find fascinating… Assuming this is true, people overwhelmingly dislike All Trophies. And yet, we still live in an All Trophy nation.
My gut says this is true about a lot of things.
Has the majority fallen completely silent?