Educational philosophy has changed a great deal in the 50
years since I was in school. Back then, for example, I had the
highest grades in school, but many of my teachers went out of their
way to cut me down so I wouldn"t get conceit. Aside from 1
the debated question of whether that worked, the point is that 2
today, the educational establishment has the opposite philosophy.
They tend to tell all kids they are smart. I have seen elementary
schools that most students are selected as "Honors Students." 3
Research clearly shows that if students learn best from their 4
mistakes depend on a student"s self-perception. Research by Carol 5
Dweck and colleagues at Stanford demonstrated that the students
who are most likely to learn from their mistakes are those who
don"t think of themselves as smart as such and smart enough to get 6
smarter. They have a "growth mindset," a belief system they can 7
get better if they will just invest in the time and effort. In one of 8
the group"s experiments, half of students were repeatedly praised 9
for "being smart," and these students were not good at learning
from mistakes. It is not clear why. Maybe they thought the
problem was in the learning material, not in them. The other half
of students were praised for effort and improvement and these
students got better and made few mistakes. Several months later, 10
all students repeated a standardized test, and the "smart" students"
scores dropped 20%, while the "growth mindset" students scored
30% higher.