61–70 of 131 posts
I don't think it's worth praising effort nor results. The real thing that should be praised imo is measurable improvement.
For children, what makes makes effort into measurable improvement is guidance/teaching.
A major rule in parenting is to praise effort and hard work which strengthens the 'internal locus of control' as opposed to seeing some positive action and then commenting on how smart they are. People view 'smarts' as something binary, you are or you aren't and therefore you are strengthening the external locus of control. Eventually when smarts aren't enough, and additional progress requires grit, those who were pr…
There are no widely accepted rules in parenting, because the outcomes people are trying to create in their kids are so wildly different. Raising kids is like cooking a dish over a decade or more with no recipe. Imagine one set of parents making brownies, and another trying to make Chicken Kiev. How much chocolate should you use?
I don't think anyone is trying to achieve an outcome where their child feels inadequate. The point is well meaning parents can unintentionally do harm with their words. So I don't know where you are going with your analogy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's insane. When I "make an effort" to pay a parking ticket on time and I don't, nobody gives me a shiny sticker star - I have to pay double instead. EDIT: People, I said nothing about children paying parking tickets or about poor people. My comment is an example of a self-inflicted problem that is exacerbated by self-inflicted delay, to which the consequences must be borne by the individual as is the nature of li…
And interestingly, societies in which children routinely pay parking tickets are rare. There are different purposes to different activities. Teaching kids how to learn, for instance, anticipates a different outcome than chastising people for antisocial parking. Or do you believe yelling at sick children until they get healthy is the proper approach?
This is anecdotal, but I have also noticed the related inverse problem as well. Students who think they are "one of the dumb kids" do much worse than similar students who do not think that. These students will randomly guess the answer to a multiple choice[1] question if they don't instantly know the answer, even if the answer to the question was basically given in another question on the test. Part of helping this k…
Reminds me something else: in college I failed hard, some times I tried to really learn but would drown at the second question. Surprisingly the topic I didn't even bother to learn, I had better grades. Because all I had was 2 hours, the subject and my brain. I didn't feel demotivated by not being able to answer question 2 since I was unable to answer any of these right off the bat. But after thinking, I could grab a few point here and there, and try every problems. It even became absurd when at a discrete math exam (that nobody loves) every body left after the first page thinking page 2 would be even harder. Turns out the remaining exercices were trivial, even for my tourist self. So I ended in the first pack.
Anecdote: I had always been told I was intelligent and clever. When it came to the exams everyone takes as a 15/16 year old in the UK I distinctly remember thinking to myself something like: "everyone has to be able to pass these exams, so I should be able to pass easily without much effort since I am one of the clever kids". I didn't cheat, but my line of thought led me to a fairly disappointing set of results (as y…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A bit of both is probably good. For example: in Belgium, in recent years a lot of kids are (often) given points for effort so they can pass a certain grade. More and more the case. I talked to a teacher friend about this, and while he thinks its great, I think it's ridiculous. Do we want a society of people who put in some effort yet achieve nothing? Now, not that I think the educational system shouldn't be flexible…
The point is people usually get better objective results if you praise their relative effort. Employers are obviously interested in grades that reflect the objective skill level of the to-be-employed. The problem is people subconsciously build up explanations for their observed performance. If a kid routinely has a hard time with maths, its more probable that they develop a causal model that puts themselves in a stat…
Couldn't the lack of absolute feedback lead to uncertainty and therefore overcompensation? I'm thinking of my school colleagues who were set on entering college courses with very high entrance requirements. Without a clear idea whether they were doing enough, I could see them absolutely burning out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A bit of both is probably good. For example: in Belgium, in recent years a lot of kids are (often) given points for effort so they can pass a certain grade. More and more the case. I talked to a teacher friend about this, and while he thinks its great, I think it's ridiculous. Do we want a society of people who put in some effort yet achieve nothing? Now, not that I think the educational system shouldn't be flexible…
The point is people usually get better objective results if you praise their relative effort. Employers are obviously interested in grades that reflect the objective skill level of the to-be-employed. The problem is people subconsciously build up explanations for their observed performance. If a kid routinely has a hard time with maths, its more probable that they develop a causal model that puts themselves in a stat…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is people usually get better objective results if you praise their relative effort. Employers are obviously interested in grades that reflect the objective skill level of the to-be-employed. The problem is people subconsciously build up explanations for their observed performance. If a kid routinely has a hard time with maths, its more probable that they develop a causal model that puts themselves in a stat…
Relative grading all the way up to the last school year, then a final test assessing objective performance. Couldn't the lack of absolute feedback lead to uncertainty and therefore overcompensation? I'm thinking of my school colleagues who were set on entering college courses with very high entrance requirements. Without a clear idea whether they were doing enough, I could see them absolutely burning out.
Anecdote: I had always been told I was intelligent and clever. When it came to the exams everyone takes as a 15/16 year old in the UK I distinctly remember thinking to myself something like: "everyone has to be able to pass these exams, so I should be able to pass easily without much effort since I am one of the clever kids". I didn't cheat, but my line of thought led me to a fairly disappointing set of results (as y…
I was homeschooled for much of my childhood and first went to a public school my Junior year of high school. I didnt think of myself as exceptionally smart - average at best. I was in a English class one day half way through the year when the teacher was putting us into group. A girl he paired me up with said, "Yay he's smart!" and that was the first time I ever thought I was a "smart" kid. That was a town in Vermont where the public education system was not very good.
Later when I went to college I realized I was just about average at most things, a bit above average at some, and significantly below average at many things (due to poor homeschooling).
As an adult I realize that I'm more intelligent than the average joe but when I'm in a room of professors or even people who have a passion for studying and learning I can tell I'm simply not at the same level as them.
I have been told that praising a kid for effort vs. results is much more important. As a child, I was told I was smart and basically tried to coast as much as possible. I still have a lot of trouble learning how to do something new, especially because I have kind of internalized that I'm good at everything.
I think that's probably more personality than anything else. I was always told I was smart and was never motivated. Perfect example: I took the ACT only once because I scored a 30 and it wasn't worth it for me to try to improve that score. Meanwhile, all of my honors & AP class friends took it several times scoring 33s, 34s, & 35s. This was a direct result of my "intelligence complex" and yet I have no trouble learni…
It's hard to teach it to yourself (I'm the same way, so I don't mean it as a slight).