Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts' • Hacker News Board

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#51

Post by Macphisto » Sat, Feb 19, 2011, 3:04 PM UTC

westicle wrote: post #37

Macphisto wrote: post #7

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 sh…

The fact that your three year old daughter loves watching Futurama already says a lot about her mental aptitude/attitude. I'm sure she doesn't "get" a lot of it at this stage, but I bet she will learn a surprising amount from sticking with it.

Actually that's the strange thing. She's learned not only the specific funny quotes but she uses them in situationally-correct instances. When crashing two cars together, "Buckle your sphincters!". When I pull her out of the tub and she can't see because her massive amount if hair is in the way, "My lawyer will hear about this!" When she wants to make us laugh she puts both her claws up in the air and goes for a Zoidberg scuttle.

I've had to defend the fact that I let a three year old watch Futurama many a time. Mostly to people who would rather I show things like Dora (I don't like my kid yelling at the TV) or movies like The Little Mermaid (truly horrific from viewpoint of relationship modeling). Admittedly sometimes my kid walks around quoting Bender "Ass Ass Ass Ass Ass!" and it might one day get sent to the Principle's office but she also admires female star ship captains, recognizes hard work (fry and the holophoner), and naturally distrusts cephalapod doctors. There are a lot more issues I hope she can start to pick up like the value of friendship, that math is awesome and to never be without your doomsday device "for duck huntin'!"

Sorry for the tangent.

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#52

Post by jarin » Sat, Feb 19, 2011, 3:33 PM UTC

infocaptor wrote: post #50

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. 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 ta…

Conversely, I was always told I was smart. I always aced tests but I struggled constantly with doing my homework (not because it was difficult but because I avoided starting it until the last minute).

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#53

Post by blakeweb » Sat, Feb 19, 2011, 5:19 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #25

kmfrk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such a shame that people who want to be popular define "smart as" smart = results/effort It gives them an incentive to slack, and while that may work in the lower tiers of the school system, they're going to hit a brick wall at some point, and for many, it will be too late for them to do anything to catch up. I also recall someone on Quora referring as the distorted picture in places like Stanford described as t…

Your equation is mathematically equivalent to: results = effort x smart The problem is optimizing this equation for smart, rather than for results.

I like that construction. The article also emphasizes teaching kids another contributing equation:

  smart = sum(previous efforts)

Giving a final equation:

  immediate results = immediate effort * sum(previous efforts)

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#54

Post by solarmist » Sat, Feb 19, 2011, 5:22 PM UTC

brg wrote: post #3

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."

Haha, wow. That's the first time I've ever heard reference to that film outside Korea. Awesome. And it's totally true. It took me decades to get over my I'm smart syndrome.

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#55

Post by protomyth » Sat, Feb 19, 2011, 5:49 PM UTC

ojbyrne wrote: post #24

_delirium wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, that one I could see more, but unless my schooling was very atypical, it often wasn't the case in K-12 that good results actually were evidence of effort. Would kids believe it if you told them? If I remember, say, algebra class, the kids who did best were mostly kids who found algebra easy. Somehow it just made sense to them, and the concepts clicked with them as soon as they were introduced. If you praised the…

I'm having a hard time thinking of classes where memorization dominated "being good at." Even history, if it was taught as a bunch of meaningless dates, treaties and battle names, was still amenable to learning through outside reading, because if you found the right books, they'd make those dull meaningless facts memorable.

In high school there were a lot of classes where memorization was the only real measure of "smart". Every test was a "remember the fact / date" test for history, social studies, and quite a bit of english. I have a really horrible memory for that type of stuff and just memorized a sheet I wrote before the test. Outside reading is a lot easier now, but at the time the school library was pretty pathetic for that type of stuff (no ref book checkout either and no study halls).

Before someone mentions the "local library", there was none during my high school years. The closest one (in the next town over) specifically barred people from my town from using it (taxes and another less happy social reason).

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#56

Post by haberman » Sat, Feb 19, 2011, 6:29 PM UTC

brg wrote: post #3

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."

Or the child will be obsessed with living up to the high opinion everyone has of him and avoid anything that might make him look dumb.

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#57

Post by gChinkin » Sat, Feb 19, 2011, 7:23 PM UTC

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.

Another consequence of this upbringing is that learning became a grind for me - pursuing intelligence rather than interest.

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.

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#58

Post by borism » Sat, Feb 19, 2011, 9:41 PM UTC

robertk wrote: post #9

brg wrote: post #3

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."

Story of my life.

been there, done that :)

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#59

Post by Swannie » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 12:29 AM UTC

kmfrk wrote: post #10

brg wrote: post #3

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."

It's such a shame that people who want to be popular define "smart as" smart = results/effort It gives them an incentive to slack, and while that may work in the lower tiers of the school system, they're going to hit a brick wall at some point, and for many, it will be too late for them to do anything to catch up. I also recall someone on Quora referring as the distorted picture in places like Stanford described as t…

"It gives them an incentive to slack, and while that may work in the lower tiers of the school system, they're going to hit a brick wall at some point, and for many, it will be too late for them to do anything to catch up."

Agreed. I hit the wall in the final year at University. Worst time ever.

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#60

Post by Swannie » Sun, Feb 20, 2011, 12:48 AM UTC

Anyone have some good advice on getting out of this sort of pattern, if it was established in your youth?

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.

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!

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.