Too Many Kids Quit Science Because They Don't Think They're Smart

An anonymous reader writes: Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford, has done years of study on how students' attitudes affect their academic achievements. Her work began at the height of the "self-esteem movement," when parents were told to praise their kids' brainpower at every turn. But Professor Dweck found that praise for intelligence or talent — relatively immutable characteristics — only turned kids off of trying subjects they perceived as difficult, like math and science. Praising effort, perseverance, and problem-solving strategies works better. She also says, "There is such a thing as too much praise, we believe." Instead, she suggests engaging with kids about the process itself, showing interest and encouragement when they talk about how they did something.

Comments

Re:We Totally Got it Right This Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Psychology professors have made no such statement.

Yes, you'll get the mod points for the quip, but it's about as false as 2 equals 3.

Psychology professors have stated that negative reinforcement doesn't work. They've also stated that you shouldn't tie innate features to success, as when the success stops coming, one believes innate features have failed. That's why they have advocated for decades the praise of the effort.

If the success stops coming, the person who has been praised on the effort they put in will deduct that the effort "failed"; or in short, they didn't put in enough effort.

Contract that to a person who's been praised because they are smart. If the success stops coming, the person who has been praised for being smart will deduct that they mustn't have been that smart after all; or in short, they are "not smart enough" to succeed. It's a lot harder to solve a problem when you begin to doubt yourself. Self doubt gets in the way of motivating yourself to give it the extra effort needed.

I attribute the "praise everything" movement to the popularization (aka media spin) of what the psychology professors were actually saying, which at that time was the "punish all wrong" mentality was doing excessive damage to motivation.

Re:They're probably correct

[GLMDesigns]

Rote memorization is very important and is seriously undervalued. Try learning an instrument or a sport w/o rote memorization. Memorizing, and developing the capacity to memorize is important. We need more rote memorization, not less.