Growth Mindset

Growth Mindset - Carol Dweck

After watching Carol Dweck's Ted Talk, I agree with her approach to encourage children growing up with an ensuring message of 'Not Yet'. I'll explain my perspective of this issue.

Because of expectations that gets higher and higher, people are becoming more and more susceptible to failure and often defeated by the idea of failure. The prospect of 'Yet' is that people can realize that they can improve by learning from the mistakes, and learn to not make such mistakes again. 

There's a reason why people do better at the things they love than the ones they don't. People always have a genuine interest in the subjects they love and will show full dedication to it. When they fail, they will try again until they succeed and eventually they will improve. They are 'positively encouraged' when dealing with failure and defeat because they can see it as a challenge to improve.

Dweck said a statement that I felt was particularly true when it comes to people in general. "First of all, we can praise wisely, not praising intelligence or talent. That has failed.// But praising the process that kids engage in, their effort, their strategies, their focus, their perseverance, their improvement."

There are many times when people see individuals who are experts in their crafts and passion and tell them that they are 'very talented' or that they are 'born with a gift'. This almost completely disregards the fact that the individual might have spent huge amounts of time perfecting their craft because they simply are very passionate about it. They may not be good at it at all in the beginning but with practice and effort they improved over the years.
Discrediting their hard work and perseverance by saying that they are 'talented' or 'gifted', I think it's a bad way to tell children that they need to be talented to do something when they should be encouraged to do it regardless of talent.

I can demonstrate it with some memes.

"This is little Timmy, he's 1 month old. He can already
draw the most detailed and voluptuous pair of bosoms
mankind has ever seen.    What a talented boy!"

Words from a great mind: Arin Hanson

If you think about it, people like Einstein was probably never a genius to begin with. It was said that he failed his classes, which was untrue. He actually excelled at mathematics and as we all know now, it really shows. Einstein had a love for something and he put all his effort in it, improving himself and the world as well. 
Didn't Thomas Edison said "Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration"?

We should foster a child/student's passion and encourage them to put in their full effort in when dealing with problems so they may learn and improve instead of fearing failure and its consequences.

















And that's the end of my blog. I have to admit that Carol Dweck might not be the first person to speak about this topic so there isn't anything particularly new about her talk. But I can nonetheless agreed that her message is truly genuine and very informative.