“Intelligence” is starting to be recognized as a strength to be cultivated, rather than an unchangeable aspect in young people.
Stanford University professor of psychology Carol Dweck has discovered that when children are told that they “are” smart, they tend to want to show that they are smart and “avoid tasks that might reveal deficiencies.” They don’t want to make effort and even struggle with knowing how to exert effort.
Teaching children that they are
valued for their intelligence or that their intelligence will make them
successful actually has the effect of crippling their initiative and confidence.
Dweck has found that students praised for hard work perform better than those
praised for intelligence. Students whose efforts are acknowledged are more
likely to be excited about challenges and learning. Expressing encouragement for
students’ struggle, industriousness, and even their mistakes conveys the message
that “if you work hard, you have enormous potential.”
When we praise students
for their efforts, we help them to cultivate an attitude of pushing past their
limits. They learn through experience that success comes from dedication,
passion and diligent efforts.
Rather than being limited to fixed ideas, let us re-educate ourselves – and our
children – to honestly work at improving our capabilities, qualities, and life
situations. Through our own dreams and consequent efforts we can build not only
our intelligence, but our deeper ethical character.
We are not born good or bad, courageous or cowardly, courteous or rude, but we can become any of these through our own choices and actions.
As all the great philosophical traditions
through the ages have urged, let us surpass our limits with determination, endeavour and vision to bring our potentialities into living experience!
