When my Daughter was born (now three) my wife insisted that I and everyone who has regular contact with her focus on her hard work and not simply say "you're soo smart!". It's tough to make that association but I think I've seen actual results from it. My daughter is about three weeks into ISR swim classes and I can see her shift into her "hard working" face even when she's a little upset or crying. She knows that she has to work hard (show visible effort) at staying calm or calming quickly or trying new things if she wants her reward (her favorite thing in the world: Futurama). It's one of the few developmental guidelines my wife has laid down and I've come around to see it as the most important because to be frank I didn't learn that lesson until WAY too late.
These things seem to go in waves. In the 1990s, I remember the <i>opposite</i> worry, that a bunch of new educational theories had put too much emphasis on praising effort rather than results, the whole A-for-effort thing.<p>It's interesting that the politics have shifted a bit, though. I remember the emphasize-effort view being associated with clearly "liberal", almost hippie approaches, that what's important is encouraging every kid to give it their best try, so they actualize their own potential, etc. Meanwhile the more "conservative" view was very results-oriented, sort of: I don't give a damn if your kid is trying hard or lazy, all that should matter in math class is whether he does the math right or wrong. The current wave of articles don't seem to have that same political divide.
There's an excellent quote from the Korean file "My Sassy Girl" about this. To paraphrase, "Never tell a child he's smart, after a while he'll begin to believe it and start to get lazy."
I feel like reading this article may make me react in the same way that the sample groups of the tests did. Hopefully in the much greater long term, that'd be nice. Good thing I read it(maybe).<p>I had noticed the same pattern in myself. My parents would tell me that I'm smart, and then I'd get pissed and frustrated at my math homework if I didn't understand the concepts within a grand total of 15 minutes. Then Discrete Math hit me and I realized that there would be no way for me to survive on just 15 minutes of attempts of any problem/concept(but I'd still be frustrated all of the time).
Watch Malcolm Gladwell's interview with Fareed Zakaria for his book "Outliers" (part 1: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCt1Wc8Kx4U" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCt1Wc8Kx4U</a>, part 2: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf3NalDYIT8" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf3NalDYIT8</a>).<p>In "Outliers" Malcolm explores what makes a person successful and asks the question, "Why do some talented people flame out early while others go on to brilliant careers?"<p>Malcolm's main premise is, "Success doesn't have much to do with talent. It's almost always a product of hard work and the culture of which we live our lives."<p>But I think Malcolm is really describing the development of genius and how the environment/culture either encourages or discourages people from focusing on a certain areas or ideas. Go the wrong way and you miss developing into your true potential.<p>From my perspective, genius is not so much measured by IQ, although a high IQ helps, but genius can be measured by how rare and valuable your perspective is and how effectively you see patterns in- and make associations or connections among disparate ideas. Paul Cooijmans has a similar perspective (<a href="http://www.paulcooijmans.com/genius/" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulcooijmans.com/genius/</a>).<p>Developing these rare or unique perspectives usually takes deliberate and devoted focus on something (like when Malcolm talks about the 10,000-hour rule).<p>Einstein wasn't a genius because he was most skilled in math -- he wasn't -- Einstein became a genius because he relentlessly explored a problem, following it our farther than anyone had taken it before. This allowed him to see connections that no one had seen before, and these connections/discoveries were valuable to humanity.<p>So yes, praise kids for their effort -- it's one of the requisite components of genius.
Using "Once again" in the title seems misplaced, since the article is from 2007.<p>When I was growing up, it seemed ok to be praised for being smart, because life outside of being smart was terrifically difficult. Taking the school bus to school, being bullied, having a weird foreign name, the Canadian winter, those all seemed to promote some resilience, and being smarter than your average bear just seemed to be a light of hope.
<a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/" rel="nofollow">http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/</a> is the non-print version for anyone that ran into problems with the javascript on the print page.
> These students took turns reading aloud an essay on how the brain grows new neurons when challenged.<p>> To be effective, researchers have found, praise needs to be specific.<p>> Just as the research promised, this focused praise helped him see strategies he could apply the next day.<p>This strongly reminds me of how successful companies experiment to improve their products' performance. These experiments, by definition are trial-and-error, and involve mistakes and backtracking, because they don't yet have enough data to develop a theory that predicts exactly what will work. Over time, as it does become formalized, that aspect is no longer profitable because then anyone can do it.
Calling someone smart has little meaning, because it means different things in different contexts and one persons smart may not even be considered smart at all to others. A lot of it is age related to, being good at multiplication in the first grade is going to get you called smart, later in life it's just assumed.<p>Also as a related example people confuse memorization with smarts, here in Australia times tables are generally taught up to 12*12, if a kid if very fast at these but falls over once the number goes over 12 they have just put a lot of time into memorization without picking up the principles properly.
When praise becomes the reward, the strategy is to do whatever it takes to get praise. When success is the reward, the strategy becomes learning how to succeed, which often means passing through failure. We all have an innate ability to find the success strategy. For example, video games have no mercy--the only way to succeed is to keep trying until you get better. And yet most kids will continue to play a new game until they improve because, in this case, learning is an adventure, its own reward. The best teachers seem to apply this to the classroom.
Praising kids for effort is a mistake. That leads to adults who excel in giving the impression of expending great effort without properly planning for success. Praise kids for what you want - achievement.
To be honest your kids can usually figure out if they are smart or not pretty quickly once they enter the school system. The thing is there are lots of smart people out there. As you progress through the education system you usually meet people smarter than you and hopefully realise that you need to work to keep with them.
It's like thinking you are the king of code in your job and then discovering HN - you quickly realise there is always someone smarter so you need to work to get their level.
The real world doesn't care nearly as much about effort as it does about the end result, except as a mitigation for failure. Why effort and not .2 x effort + .8 x accomplishment?
Anyone have some good advice on getting out of this sort of pattern, if it was established in your youth?<p>The only teacher that broke that habit at my school was my Chemistry teacher. He knew I was very smart, and I started handed in the bare minimum of lab reports. For example when he was expecting 6 steps of working and 10 lines of analysis, he got 1 line of working/answer, and two lines of "bloody obvious, X = Y" style analysis :P. He fixed that by shouting "What is this? Hmm? You're a lazy toad!!!" at me in front of the whole class... not very professional, but it worked. He always got the best of my effort. And I think he always marked me down compared to the rest of the class: whilst my work may have been to the same standard as them, it wasn't close to my best work.<p>In the world of work, the best antidote has been working with other very smart people. To stand out or earn their praise, being smart isn't enough, you have to get things done too. When I was slacking off for 20mins here to check Facebook, and 10mins there to read some news... they knocked out 30mins of code and moved on. Crap!<p>So I now look for smart people to work for/with, ones who work harder than me, because they inspire me to actually work, not just coast-work-coast through my day.
Its not that we think too much of ourselves or too little, but that we think about ourselves too much.<p>Here the praise is feedback about actual effort made, not about some abstract concept of how great or smart we are. The abstract raise focuses the mind away from the real world towards an abstraction.
Why not praise them for both. Joel Spolsky wrote a whole book on the importance of hiring smart people, but also people that get stuff done. I tend to think that having a strong work ethic is more important than being smart, as longs as you are smart enough to complete the task at hand, but if you spend all your time grinding on the wrong thing, you aren't going to get anywhere.<p>Praise kids for effort put into intellectually challenging work that they complete with good results. We should praise intelligence, it's what our society runs on. Intelligence certainly doesn't need to be devalued any more than it already is.
The author of this article has an excellent book titled "NurtureShock" (co-authored with Ashley Merryman), covering this and other relevant subjects. I highly recommend it, even if you don't have kids but especially if you do.
I'm reminded of Philip Larkin's "This be the verse", sometimes referred to as "They fuck you up, your parents do" - <a href="http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm</a><p>I was one of those kids praised for smarts and I attribute that to my innate laziness. I somehow believe that we're missing something when we tell people not to praise being smart. Surely a better way would be to adopt a more rounded approach? But then again, I'm neither a child psychologist nor a parent so what would I know?
The article actually gets it wrong.<p><i>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.</i><p>No, I don't think that's it. At least for me, I have caught myself thinking many times "I'm not good at X, so odds are I won't be able to be one of the best at X, so it's not worth trying"<p>(My parents never praised smarts and neither did my teachers, but I unfortunately discovered far too early I could skate by in even the hardest classes with very little effort.)
I wish my parents had doen this. I definitely fell into the mindset where "oh, I'm smart, so I don't need to try". Needless to say, I'm now playing catch up.<p>Another consequence of this upbringing is that learning became a grind for me - pursuing intelligence rather than interest.<p>I burnt out at the age of 12, and the past 8 years have been trying to find direction and motivation for my academic life.
1) Praise kids for results.<p>2) When there's no success yet, recognize effort and praise progress toward the result.<p>3) Recognize smarts and talent in general for how they help get results.<p>We should be encouraging, about intelligence, effort and results. But it's important to remember the goal (result), otherwise there's no clear focus.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc</a><p>insert upvotes and a repost to the front page
This article is right on the spot. When I grew up, I never remembered myself being told as smart. I never was. But I always worked hard and probably took longer to finish home work and stuff like that.<p>I think persistence and hard work are very closely related. Will Smith during his interview on PBS once said something like "If you put me in any challenge, no matter how smart you are and I may not have the natural talent but I will practice and work hard till I die or win"<p>When I got good scores, my dad never told me I was smart but always said "Your hard work is paying off". I guess he did this naturally and did not put any logic or theory behind it but now it all makes sense.<p>With my kid, I am going to be more aware of what I am going to praise him for and track the changes. Amazing article.