Links for October 3rd
- The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids — New York Magazine
“Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The ’smart’ kids took the cop-out. “
Tags: children feedback Learning teaching praise productivity
Comments(3)
Well, it makes some sense. If you are confident that you are smart then you will trust your judgement as to which are the easy questions . Why should they bother to expend extra effort when they already know they are smart? Good link
Ok – now I’m feeling stupid. I just read the rest of the article and there’s more to it than I first thought. Going off to think more deeply….. thanks again
Yup – quite a lot to the article. One of the things I liked was that it gave some specific advice (backed up by research) on when to praise.
It also reminded me of a story I’d heard about a head showing some parents round a secondary school. The parents asked what careers the brighter kids usually went on to pursue. And the head said (to the parents’ dismay) that it was difficult to pin the careers down to one field – they were as broad as they were varied – but the “brighter” kids usually when on to work for the “less bright” kids