Could it not be equally harmful to a smart kid to give them the impression that their intelligence is worthless? It seems there should be a balance where kids retain their motivation while also learning how to make the most of their personal advantages and disadvantages.
If a smart kid is always taught the convenient fiction that everyone is exactly the same, then when they interact with an athletic kid who dominates them at sports but struggles academically, what conclusion will the smart kid draw?
And finally, is this "praise effort and self esteem" movement responsible for the current wave of anti-free-speech protests on college campuses?
>Could it not be equally harmful to a smart kid to give them the impression that their intelligence is worthless?
That just doesn't make sense. Praise your kid for doing not for being. Who's advocating teaching smart kids everyone is the same? It seems like any child is going to realize this isn't true.
>is this "praise effort and self esteem" movement responsible for the current wave of anti-free-speech protests on college campuses?
Absolutely not.
That is a result of the cultural admiration of protesting / fighting for rights / rebelling against X. Admiration of the real civil rights movement, environmentalism, etc.
The problem is that as a society we're running out of clean cut black and white issues (no pun intended) to be opposed to. There are still problems, but not nearly as many _simple_ problems. Things are complicated these days.
So they're straying off into the weeds trying to attack complex social issues with the same strategies that worked against simple ones and coming out looking like fools. And likewise the targets of their protests are straying because complex issues don't have a big bad evil you can hate, and that nuance and detail are being lost.
The once reasonable protesting class are being supplanted by increasingly unreasonable protestors who are rebels searching desperately for a cause.
Who's advocating teaching smart kids everyone is the same?
It seems that has been the general trend in elementary education since I was a kid. As an example, I remember the year that all the talent trophies were changed to be the same size, and everyone got one just for participating. Athletics were an exception, though; it was considered acceptable to be better at sports. It was a noble attempt to try to boost the underprivileged, but just ended up confusing everyone.
The once reasonable protesting class are being supplanted by increasingly unreasonable protestors who are rebels searching desperately for a cause.
This is an interesting explanation for the phenomenon I had not yet considered. I am not yet convinced it is the right or only one, but I will keep it in mind.
I was a "smart kid" in high school and found myself getting bored in the honors class to point of getting kicked out and pushed into the "normal" class as the only white kid, 90% of the time.
It was honestly probably the best thing that happened to me. It helped me build empathy and grounded me to accepting that intelligence is only one piece of the puzzle. I'm now working in a position that gives me huge intellectual freedom.
There's a difference between the "honors" classes with the kid/parent drama and "normal" students. In can see where not being wrapped up with the super achiever people would be a benefit.
In my specific case, it was a poor rural district with four 20-25 student sections. Mixing up the barely literate and disruptive kids made things harder. In my senior year my project partner in Civics was a fellow senior who basically couldn't write.
The only escape was AP classes -- but we only had AP English, US History and Calc.
As part of "raising standards" they started requiring advanced math. We were unable to compete the material, and I learned a lot of math while cramming for the annual exam -- which in my state was standardized and a key to college admissions.
Yes, agreed. Though, it's important to note that the number of honor's programs without that class of drama is small without expensive schooling or certain types of homeschooling.
Not having to do 'difficult' homework was the catalyst that gave me the freetime to work on programming which is another reason why getting kicked out was great.
Not sure why I'm thinking about it or why I'm even mentioning it, but this happened in the same city Ray Bradbury grew up. Everybody in the school was required to read 451, which was treated as a homework with uninterested students' contempt. It's very interesting to be raised in the city that influenced much of his writing.
This isn't about pretending everyone has the same abilities. It is about focusing reinforcement on the choices and actions a kid takes rather than on characteristics they have.
By reinforcing the action, you help a kid understand that it is their effort that led to the achievement, which encourages the kid to make efforts when she wants something.
Reinforcing the characteristic, on the other hand, suggests that it is the kid's innate characteristics that led to the achievement, which encourages them to defend that identity.
> athletic kid who dominates them at sports but struggles academically, what conclusion will the smart kid draw?
Your implicit assumption is that your kid will not succeed at something athletically no matter how hard they try. If a kid dreams of going for the NBA or the NFL, why not let them try?
What's the benefit of praising a child for their intelligence if intelligence is immutable? Is it a self esteem play or what?
Your implicit assumption is that your kid will not succeed at something athletically no matter how hard they try. If a kid dreams of going for the NBA or the NFL, why not let them try?
It's a hypothetical example to show that there might be kids who are inherently good at different things, and that focusing on intelligence as the attribute not to praise hasn't played out over the last 18 years the way people seemed to expect in 1998.
My point is that intellectual aspirations are just as valid as athletic ones, and that kids should be free to choose their goals and dreams with full awareness of their own advantages and disadvantages.
What's the benefit of praising a child for their intelligence if intelligence is immutable?
The benefit I am proposing is that truly intelligent children won't be afraid to use their intelligence to get ahead, nor be afraid to admit where they might not be ahead. IMO maximizing individual potential puts society in a better position to maximize societal potential than trying to normalize everyone to be similar.
> truly intelligent children won't be afraid to use their intelligence to get ahead
I think you're saying that unless you give intelligent children permission to use their intelligence, they won't do so, or will do so less. I find that very dubious. What evidence do you have for this? I even feel (though I hope I am mistaken) that what you are really after is a hint that it's okay for your kids to feel superior or entitled in some sense relative to kids that are less intelligent. If intelligence is useful for producing work, why not let all kids be judged by the work they produce, rather than something abstract like intelligence?
If a smart kid is always taught the convenient fiction that everyone is exactly the same, then when they interact with an athletic kid who dominates them at sports but struggles academically, what conclusion will the smart kid draw?
And finally, is this "praise effort and self esteem" movement responsible for the current wave of anti-free-speech protests on college campuses?