Applied not only for parents who want to raise smart, responsible and balanced kids (A MUST READ FOR YOU), but all of you, who manage, motivate and educate your teammates. This fantastic article from Scientific American MIND talks about two views on intelligence and explains why focusing on effort / and not intelligence, is key to success in school and in life.
Two Views of Intelligence
..Several years later I developed a broader theory of what separates the two general classes of learners—helpless versus mastery-oriented. I realized that these different types of students not only explain their failures differently, but they also hold different “theories” of intelligence. The helpless ones believe that intelligence is a fixed trait: you have only a certain amount, and that’s that. I call this a “fixed mind-set.” Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. They avoid challenges because challenges make mistakes more likely and looking smart less so. Like Jonathan, such children shun effort in the belief that having to work hard means they are dumb.
The mastery-oriented children, on the other hand, think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. They want to learn above all else. After all, if you believe that you can expand your intellectual skills, you want to do just that. Because slipups stem from a lack of effort, not ability, they can be remedied by more effort. Challenges are energizing rather than intimidating; they offer opportunities to learn. Students with such a growth mind-set, we predicted, were destined for greater academic success and were quite likely to outperform their counterparts.
Read: The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
1 response so far ↓
Shonzilla // Jan 28, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Roughly speaking, I have the same perception of mindset types that develop among kids who later become adults using the same tricks (or not using them).
I think that too become uncreative, conservative (in a negative, non-constructive way) due to education systems that fosters “inside the box” thinking and is generally a “non-exploratory environment”.
It is a bad thing for any human society that slowly evolving education is becoming a commodity service, forcing wealthier and more self-aware parents to invest in their child education outside the traditional education system.
I mean, check out how much Montessori and similar holistic child development and education methods cost.
If nothing starts to radically change over time, we will see see increasing difference in education level between those who “know why and can” and those who “have no clue and can’t”
offer a better education to their siblings.
Cheers!
Shonzilla
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