http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/ is the non-print version for anyone that ran into problems with the javascript on the print page.
Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'
11–20 of 62 posts
Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'
#12The 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?
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Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'
#13The 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?
It depends on what are you referring to with the real world. Are you talking about money? Yeah, sure, you can even have 200x accomplishment with .1x effort.
The message is the culture of effort, and I could not agree more. If you "teach" your kids to optimize their time, for them a test score of 8/10 would be enough if they need to dedicate 5 times less time that they would have to get a 10/10. Eventually this will derive into decreasing more and more the effort and, with it, the results. Knowing when to optimize is also a learned lesson, which comes (again) from effort, failures and success.
I have felt what they describe in the text, and... I wish somebody would have praised my effort back then. If we check most people that have accomplish something in their lives, they have done through effort. Yeah, sure, more variables are needed (you can't run like Usain Bolt or think like Gauss only by effort) but if there is a common characteristic, this is effort.
Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'
#14There'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…
The problem here is that you were comparing yourself with the rest of the people.
I have trained track and field for some years now and if I would try to compare myself with Michael Johnson, I would always be a failure. But in every sport you are (at the end) just trying to improve yourself and competing against yourself. My point is that you could have been doing a good game (for you) even without being anything similar to Pele, and maybe they were praising you for that.
Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'
#15I 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).
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).
Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'
#16These things seem to go in waves. In the 1990s, I remember the opposite 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.
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.
Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'
#17There'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…
I don't think aiming at the results/effort equation is a bad heuristic for lots of things, depending on how effort is defined. Though maybe it isn't a good equation for schooling in particular, and I agree defining people as unintelligent based on them putting in effort isn't a good strategy.
It's the basic heuristic of elegant code, for example: elegant code maximizes the ratio of results to coding effort. The opposite is when you get the results, but by slogging through a bunch of inelegant boilerplate.
It's also the whole premise behind the "hacking the workweek" type ideas, though I realize not everyone likes those.
If anything, I'd say it's a pretty pervasive part of hacker culture, and what differentiates it to some extent from "normal" engineering culture: hackers aim for that results/effort win, the cool hack, virtuosic performance, etc., rather than the N-hour straightforward, carefully managed slog. Not even just because it saves time/money, but because somehow it's intrinsically interesting to see people finding ways to get great results via a route other than "I just plowed through it and got it done". That's sometimes necessary too, but it's not the part that gives the hacker spirit a spark.
Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'
#18Earlier 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…
The problem here is that you were comparing yourself with the rest of the people. I have trained track and field for some years now and if I would try to compare myself with Michael Johnson, I would always be a failure. But in every sport you are (at the end) just trying to improve yourself and competing against yourself. My point is that you could have been doing a good game (for you) even without being anything sim…
I totally get that it'd be okay to praise me for making progress of putting effort into it, but - at least - in these cases, I weren't really. That's why it annoyed me.
It's also a reminder to be specific about your praise, too - nebulous praise is useless.
Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'
#19Using "Once again" in the title seems misplaced, since the article is from 2007.
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.
Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'
#20These things seem to go in waves. In the 1990s, I remember the opposite 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. 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…
The idea is to take good results as evidence of effort.