More thoughts on intelligence/praise
In response to my last post, some one posted a link to a New York magazine article on the Power and Peril of Praising kids. There is so much good information in that article that it is going to take me awhile to absorb it. It also helps me see why I worry about our local gifted programs with their emphasis on intelligence and results. Two paragraphs in particular rang true to me because I’ve seen Kiki think exactly this way:
Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”
In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.
Anyway, I recommend that everyone go check out the article. I think I’m going to print the whole thing out and put it in my files just in case the online version eventually disappears