This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text,
while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.
---712164092-1662961797-1171444952=:7360
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-UNKNOWN; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE
Also, I take back everything good I said about gmail. I used it to send
this article since pine loses non-ascii text when you paste it in (fancy
apostrophes and such). Gmail did much worse, eating newlines.
Unacceptable!
Here's the non-mangled url to the article:
http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
Take home message again:
Do not tell your kids they are smart. (Praise them for hard work.)
Do not praise them constantly. (They'll become praise junkies and
be frustrated when rewards aren't immediate.)
> On Wed, 14 Feb 2007, Daniel Reeves wrote:
>
>> I found this enlightening: http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/Take home
>> message:Do not tell your kids they are smart. (Praise them for hard
>> work.)Do not praise them constantly. (They'll become praise junkies and
>> befrustrated when rewards aren't immediate.)
>> Full text:
>> How Not to Talk to Your KidsThe Inverse Power of Praise.
>> * By Po Bronson
>>
>> What do we make of a boy like Thomas?
>> Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitiveP.S.
>> 334, the Anderson School on West 84th. Slim as they get, Thomasrecently had
>> his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the newJames Bond (he took
>> a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). UnlikeBond, he prefers a uniform of
>> cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazonedwith a photo of one of his heroes:
>> Frank Zappa. Thomas hangs out withfive friends from the Anderson School.
>> They are "the smart kids."Thomas's one of them, and he likes belonging.
>> Since Thomas could walk, he has heard constantly that he's smart. Notjust
>> from his parents but from any adult who has come in contact withthis
>> precocious child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten,his
>> intelligence was statistically confirmed. The school is reservedfor the top
>> one percent of all applicants, and an IQ test is required.Thomas didn't
>> just score in the top one percent. He scored in the topone percent of the
>> top one percent.
>> But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness thathe's
>> smart hasn't always translated into fearless confidence whenattacking his
>> schoolwork. In fact, Thomas's father noticed just theopposite. "Thomas
>> didn't want to try things he wouldn't be successfulat," his father says.
>> "Some things came very quickly to him, but whenthey didn't, he gave up
>> almost immediately, concluding, 'I'm not goodat this.'" With no more than a
>> glance, Thomas was dividing the worldinto twothings he was naturally good
>> at and things he wasn't.
>> For instance, in the early grades, Thomas wasn't very good atspelling, so
>> he simply demurred from spelling out loud. When Thomastook his first look
>> at fractions, he balked. The biggest hurdle camein third grade. He was
>> supposed to learn cursive penmanship, but hewouldn't even try for weeks. By
>> then, his teacher was demandinghomework be completed in cursive. Rather
>> than play catch-up on hispenmanship, Thomas refused outright. Thomas's
>> father tried to reasonwith him. "Look, just because you're smart doesn't
>> mean you don't haveto put out some effort." (Eventually, he mastered
>> cursive, but notwithout a lot of cajoling from his father.)
>> Why does this child, who is measurably at the very top of the charts,lack
>> confidence about his ability to tackle routine school challenges?
>> Thomas is not alone. For a few decades, it's been noted that a
>> largepercentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top
>> 10percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own
>> abilities.Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt
>> lowerstandards for success and expect less of themselves. They underratethe
>> importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they needfrom a
>> parent.
>> When parents praise their children's intelligence, they believe theyare
>> providing the solution to this problem. According to a surveyconducted by
>> Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents thinkit's important to
>> tell their kids that they're smart. In and aroundthe New York area,
>> according to my own (admittedly nonscientific)poll, the number is more like
>> 100 percent. Everyone does it,habitually. The constant praise is meant to
>> be an angel on theshoulder, ensuring that children do not sell their
>> talents short.
>> But a growing body of researchand a new study from the trenches ofthe New
>> York public-school systemstrongly suggests it might be theother way around .
>> Giving kids the label of "smart" does not preventthem from underperforming .
>> It might actually be causing it.
>> For the past ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team atColumbia
>> (she's now at Stanford) studied the effect of praise onstudents in a dozen
>> New York schools. Her seminal worka series ofexperiments on 400
>> fifth-graderspaints the picture most clearly.
>> Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York
>> fifth-gradeclassrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of
>> theclassroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series
>> ofpuzzlespuzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairlywell.
>> Once the child finished the test, the researchers told eachstudent his
>> score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomlydivided into groups ,
>> some were praised for their intelligence. Theywere told, "You must be smart
>> at this." Other students were praisedfor their effort: "You must have
>> worked really hard."
>> Why just a single line of praise? "We wanted to see how sensitivechildren
>> were," Dweck explained. "We had a hunch that one line mightbe enough to see
>> an effect."
>> Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round.One
>> choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, butthe
>> researchers told the kids that they'd learn a lot from attemptingthe
>> puzzles. The other choice, Dweck's team explained, was an easytest, just
>> like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90percent chose the
>> harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for theirintelligence, a majority
>> chose the easy test. The "smart" kids tookthe cop-out.
>> Why did this happen? "When we praise children for their intelligence,"Dweck
>> wrote in her study summary, "we tell them that this is the nameof the game :
>> Look smart, don't risk making mistakes." And that's whatthe fifth-graders
>> had done: They'd chosen to look smart and avoid therisk of being
>> embarrassed.
>> In a subsequent round, none of the fifth-graders had a choice. Thetest was
>> difficult, designed for kids two years ahead of their gradelevel.
>> Predictably, everyone failed. But again, the two groups ofchildren, divided
>> at random at the study's start, respondeddifferently. Those praised for
>> their effort on the first test assumedthey simply hadn't focused hard
>> enough on this test. "They got veryinvolved, willing to try every solution
>> to the puzzles," Dweckrecalled. "Many of them remarked, unprovoked, 'This
>> is my favoritetest.'" Not so for those praised for their smarts. They
>> assumed theirfailure was evidence that they weren't really smart at all.
>> "Justwatching them, you could see the strain. They were sweating
>> andmiserable."
>> Having artificially induced a round of failure, Dweck's researchersthen
>> gave all the fifth-graders a final round of tests that wereengineered to be
>> as easy as the first round. Those who had beenpraised for their effort
>> significantly improved on their firstscoreby about 30 percent. Those who 'd
>> been told they were smart didworse than they had at the very beginningby
>> about 20 percent.
>> Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she wassurprised
>> by the magnitude of the effect. "Emphasizing effort gives achild a variable
>> that they can control," she explains. "They come tosee themselves as in
>> control of their success. Emphasizing naturalintelligence takes it out of
>> the child's control, and it provides nogood recipe for responding to a
>> failure."
>> In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think thatinnate
>> intelligence is the key to success begin to discount theimportance of
>> effort. I am smart, the kids' reasoning goes; I don'tneed to put out
>> effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatizedit'spublic proof that you can 't
>> cut it on your natural gifts.
>> Repeating her experiments, Dweck found this effect of praise onperformance
>> held true for students of every socioeconomic class. Ithit both boys and
>> girlsthe very brightest girls especially (theycollapsed the most following
>> failure). Even preschoolers weren'timmune to the inverse power of praise =2E
>> Jill Abraham is a mother of three in Scarsdale, and her view istypical of
>> those in my straw poll. I told her about Dweck's researchon praise, and she
>> flatly wasn't interested in brief tests withoutlong-term follow-up. Abraham
>> is one of the 85 percent who thinkpraising her children's intelligence is
>> important. Her kids arethriving, so she's proved that praise works in the
>> real world. "Idon't care what the experts say," Jill says defiantly. "I'm
>> livingit."
>> Even those who've accepted the new research on praise have troubleputting
>> it into practice. Sue Needleman is both a mother of two and
>> anelementary-school teacher with eleven years' experience. Last year,she
>> was a fourth-grade teacher at Ridge Ranch Elementary in Paramus,New Jersey .
>> She has never heard of Carol Dweck, but the gist ofDweck's research has
>> trickled down to her school, and Needleman haslearned to say, "I like how
>> you keep trying." She tries to keep herpraise specific, rather than
>> general, so that a child knows exactlywhat she did to earn the praise (and
>> thus can get more). She willoccasionally tell a child, "You're good at
>> math," but she'll nevertell a child he's bad at math.
>> But that's at school, as a teacher. At home, old habits die hard.
>> Her8-year-old daughter and her 5-year-old son are indeed smart,
>> andsometimes she hears herself saying, "You're great. You did it.
>> You'resmart." When I press her on this, Needleman says that what comes
>> outof academia often feels artificial. "When I read the mock dialogues,my
>> first thought is, Oh, please. How corny."
>> No such qualms exist for teachers at the Life Sciences SecondarySchool in
>> East Harlem, because they've seen Dweck's theories appliedto their
>> junior-high students. Last week, Dweck and her prot=E9g=E9e, LisaBlackwell ,
>> published a report in the academic journal ChildDevelopment about the
>> effect of a semester-long intervention conductedto improve students' math
>> scores.
>> Life Sciences is a health-science magnet school with high aspirationsbut
>> 700 students whose main attributes are being predominantlyminority and low
>> achieving. Blackwell split her kids into two groupsfor an eight-session
>> workshop. The control group was taught studyskills, and the others got
>> study skills and a special module on howintelligence is not innate. These
>> students took turns reading aloud anessay on how the brain grows new
>> neurons when challenged. They sawslides of the brain and acted out skits =2E
>> "Even as I was teaching theseideas," Blackwell noted, "I would hear the
>> students joking, callingone another 'dummy' or 'stupid.'" After the module
>> was concluded,Blackwell tracked her students' grades to see if it had any
>> effect.
>> It didn't take long. The teacherswho hadn't known which students hadbeen
>> assigned to which workshopcould pick out the students who hadbeen taught
>> that intelligence can be developed. They improved theirstudy habits and
>> grades. In a single semester, Blackwell reversed thestudents' longtime
>> trend of decreasing math grades.
>> The only difference between the control group and the test group weretwo
>> lessons, a total of 50 minutes spent teaching not math but asingle idea:
>> that the brain is a muscle. Giving it a harder workoutmakes you smarter.
>> That alone improved their math scores.
>> "These are very persuasive findings," says Columbia's Dr. GeraldineDowney ,
>> a specialist in children's sensitivity to rejection. "Theyshow how you can
>> take a specific theory and develop a curriculum thatworks." Downey's
>> comment is typical of what other scholars in thefield are saying. Dr.
>> Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard social psychologistwho is an expert in
>> stereotyping, told me, "Carol Dweck is a flat-outgenius. I hope the work is
>> taken seriously. It scares people when theysee these results."
>> Since the 1969 publication of The Psychology of Self-Esteem, in
>> whichNathaniel Branden opined that self-esteem was the single mostimportant
>> facet of a person, the belief that one must do whatever hecan to achieve
>> positive self-esteem has become a movement with broadsocietal effects.
>> Anything potentially damaging to kids' self-esteemwas axed. Competitions
>> were frowned upon. Soccer coaches stoppedcounting goals and handed out
>> trophies to everyone. Teachers threw outtheir red pencils. Criticism was
>> replaced with ubiquitous, evenundeserved, praise.
>> Dweck and Blackwell's work is part of a larger academic challenge toone of
>> the self-esteem movement's key tenets: that praise,self-esteem, and
>> performance rise and fall together. From 1970 to2000, there were over
>> 15,000 scholarly articles written on self-esteemand its relationship to
>> everythingfrom sex to career advancement. Butresults were often
>> contradictory or inconclusive. So in 2003 theAssociation for Psychological
>> Science asked Dr. Roy Baumeister, then aleading proponent of self-esteem ,
>> to review this literature. His teamconcluded that self-esteem was polluted
>> with flawed science. Only 200of those 15,000 studies met their rigorous
>> standards.
>> After reviewing those 200 studies, Baumeister concluded that havinghigh
>> self-esteem didn't improve grades or career achievement. Itdidn't even
>> reduce alcohol usage. And it especially did not lowerviolence of any sort .
>> (Highly aggressive, violent people happen tothink very highly of
>> themselves, debunking the theory that people areaggressive to make up for
>> low self-esteem.) At the time, Baumeisterwas quoted as saying that his
>> findings were "the biggestdisappointment of my career."
>> Now he's on Dweck's side of the argument, and his work is going in asimilar
>> direction: He will soon publish an article showing that forcollege students
>> on the verge of failing in class, esteem-buildingpraise causes their grades
>> to sink further. Baumeister has come tobelieve the continued appeal of
>> self-esteem is largely tied toparents' pride in their children's
>> achievements: It's so strong that"when they praise their kids, it's not
>> that far from praisingthemselves."
>> By and large, the literature on praise shows that it can beeffectivea
>> positive, motivating force. In one study, University ofNotre Dame
>> researchers tested praise's efficacy on a losing collegehockey team. The
>> experiment worked: The team got into the playoffs.But all praise is not
>> equaland, as Dweck demonstrated, the effects ofpraise can vary
>> significantly depending on the praise given. To beeffective, researchers
>> have found, praise needs to be specific. (Thehockey players were
>> specifically complimented on the number of timesthey checked an opponent
=2E)
>> Sincerity of praise is also crucial. Just as we can sniff out the
>> truemeaning of a backhanded compliment or a disingenuous apology,children ,
>> too, scrutinize praise for hidden agendas. Only youngchildrenunder the age
>> of 7take praise at face value: Older childrenare just as suspicious of it
>> as adults.
>> Psychologist Wulf-Uwe Meyer, a pioneer in the field, conducted aseries of
>> studies where children watched other students receivepraise. According to
>> Meyer's findings, by the age of 12, childrenbelieve that earning praise
>> from a teacher is not a sign you didwellit's actually a sign you lack
>> ability and the teacher thinks youneed extra encouragement. And teens,
>> Meyer found, discounted praise tosuch an extent that they believed it's a
>> teacher's criticismnotpraise at allthat really conveys a positive belief in
>> a student'saptitude.
>> In the opinion of cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, a teacherwho
>> praises a child may be unwittingly sending the message that thestudent
>> reached the limit of his innate ability, while a teacher whocriticizes a
>> pupil conveys the message that he can improve hisperformance even further .
>> New York University professor of psychiatry Judith Brook explains thatthe
>> issue for parents is one of credibility. "Praise is important, butnot
>> vacuous praise," she says. "It has to be based on a realthingsome skill or
>> talent they have." Once children hear praise theyinterpret as meritless,
>> they discount not just the insincere praise,but sincere praise as well.
>> Scholars from Reed College and Stanford reviewed over 150 praisestudies.
>> Their meta-analysis determined that praised students becomerisk-averse and
>> lack perceived autonomy. The scholars found consistentcorrelations between
>> a liberal use of praise and students' "shortertask persistence, more
>> eye-checking with the teacher, and inflectedspeech such that answers have
>> the intonation of questions."
>> Dweck's research on overpraised kids strongly suggests that
>> imagemaintenance becomes their primary concernthey are more competitiveand
>> more interested in tearing others down. A raft of very alarmingstudies
>> illustrate this.
>> In one, students are given two puzzle tests. Between the first and
>> thesecond, they are offered a choice between learning a new puzzlestrategy
>> for the second test or finding out how they did compared withother students
>> on the first test: They have only enough time to do oneor the other.
>> Students praised for intelligence choose to find outtheir class rank,
>> rather than use the time to prepare.
>> In another, students get a do-it-yourself report card and are toldthese
>> forms will be mailed to students at another schoolthey'll nevermeet these
>> students and don't know their names. Of the kids praisedfor their
>> intelligence, 40 percent lie, inflating their scores. Of thekids praised
>> for effort, few lie.
>> When students transition into junior high, some who'd done well
>> inelementary school inevitably struggle in the larger and more
>> demandingenvironment. Those who equated their earlier success with their
>> innateability surmise they've been dumb all along. Their grades
>> neverrecover because the likely key to their recoveryincreasingeffortthey
>> view as just further proof of their failure. In interviewsmany confess they
>> would "seriously consider cheating."
>> Students turn to cheating because they haven't developed a strategyfor
>> handling failure. The problem is compounded when a parent ignoresa child 's
>> failures and insists he'll do better next time. Michiganscholar Jennifer
>> Crocker studies this exact scenario and explains thatthe child may come to
>> believe failure is something so terrible, thefamily can't acknowledge its
>> existence. A child deprived of theopportunity to discuss mistakes can't
>> learn from them.
>> My son, Luke, is in kindergarten. He seems supersensitive to thepotential
>> judgment of his peers. Luke justifies it by saying, "I'mshy," but he's not
>> really shy. He has no fear of strange cities ortalking to strangers, and at
>> his school, he has sung in front of largeaudiences. Rather, I'd say he's
>> proud and self-conscious. His schoolhas simple uniforms (navy T-shirt, navy
>> pants), and he loves that hischoice of clothes can't be ridiculed, "because
>> then they'd be teasingthemselves too."
>> After reading Carol Dweck's research, I began to alter how I praisedhim,
>> but not completely. I suppose my hesitation was that the mind-setDweck
>> wants students to havea firm belief that the way to bounce backfrom failure
>> is to work hardersounds awfully clich=E9d: Try, try again.
>> But it turns out that the ability to repeatedly respond to failure
>> byexerting more effortinstead of simply giving upis a trait wellstudied in
>> psychology. People with this trait, persistence, reboundwell and can
>> sustain their motivation through long periods of delayedgratification.
>> Delving into this research, I learned that persistenceturns out to be more
>> than a conscious act of will; it's also anunconscious response, governed by
>> a circuit in the brain. Dr. RobertCloninger at Washington University in St .
>> Louis located the circuit ina part of the brain called the orbital and
>> medial prefrontal cortex.It monitors the reward center of the brain, and
>> like a switch, itintervenes when there's a lack of immediate reward. When
>> it switcheson, it's telling the rest of the brain, "Don't stop trying.
>> There'sdopa [the brain's chemical reward for success] on the horizon."
>> Whileputting people through MRI scans, Cloninger could see this
>> switchlighting up regularly in some. In others, barely at all.
>> What makes some people wired to have an active circuit?
>> Cloninger has trained rats and mice in mazes to have persistence
>> bycarefully not rewarding them when they get to the finish. "The key
>> isintermittent reinforcement," says Cloninger. The brain has to learnthat
>> frustrating spells can be worked through. "A person who grows upgetting too
>> frequent rewards will not have persistence, becausethey'll quit when the
>> rewards disappear."
>> That sold me. I'd thought "praise junkie" was just an
>> expressionbutsuddenly, it seemed as if I could be setting up my son's brain
>> for anactual chemical need for constant reward.
>> What would it mean, to give up praising our children so often? Well,if I am
>> one example, there are stages of withdrawal, each of themsubtle. In the
>> first stage, I fell off the wagon around other parentswhen they were busy
>> praising their kids. I didn't want Luke to feelleft out. I felt like a
>> former alcoholic who continues to drinksocially. I became a Social Praiser .
>> Then I tried to use the specific-type praise that Dweck recommends.
>> Ipraised Luke, but I attempted to praise his "process." This was easiersaid
>> than done. What are the processes that go on in a 5-year-old'smind? In my
>> impression, 80 percent of his brain processes lengthyscenarios for his
>> action figures.
>> But every night he has math homework and is supposed to read a phonicsbook
>> aloud. Each takes about five minutes if he concentrates, but he'seasily
>> distracted. So I praised him for concentrating without askingto take a
>> break. If he listened to instructions carefully, I praisedhim for that.
>> After soccer games, I praised him for looking to pass,rather than just
>> saying, "You played great." And if he worked hard toget to the ball, I
>> praised the effort he applied.
>> Just as the research promised, this focused praise helped him seestrategies
>> he could apply the next day. It was remarkable hownoticeably effective this
>> new form of praise was.
>> Truth be told, while my son was getting along fine under the newpraise
>> regime, it was I who was suffering. It turns out that I was thereal praise
>> junkie in the family. Praising him for just a particularskill or task felt
>> like I left other parts of him ignored andunappreciated. I recognized that
>> praising him with the universal"You're greatI'm proud of you" was a way I
>> expressed unconditionallove.
>> Offering praise has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties ofmodern
>> parenting. Out of our children's lives from breakfast todinner, we turn it
>> up a notch when we get home. In those few hourstogether, we want them to
>> hear the things we can't say during thedayWe are in your corner, we are
>> here for you, we believe in you.
>> In a similar way, we put our children in high-pressure environments,seeking
>> out the best schools we can find, then we use the constantpraise to soften
>> the intensity of those environments. We expect somuch of them, but we hide
>> our expectations behind constant glowingpraise. The duplicity became
>> glaring to me.
>> Eventually, in my final stage of praise withdrawal, I realized thatnot
>> telling my son he was smart meant I was leaving it up to him tomake his own
>> conclusion about his intelligence. Jumping in with praiseis like jumping in
>> too soon with the answer to a homework problemitrobs him of the chance to
>> make the deduction himself.
>> But what if he makes the wrong conclusion?
>> Can I really leave this up to him, at his age?
>> I'm still an anxious parent. This morning, I tested him on the way
>> toschool: "What happens to your brain, again, when it gets to thinkabout
>> something hard?"
>> "It gets bigger, like a muscle," he responded, having aced this one before .
>> -- http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves - - search://"Daniel Reeves "
>>
>
--
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves - - search://"Daniel Reeves"
"When you're swimming in a creek,
And an eel bites your cheek--
That's a moray!"
---712164092-1662961797-1171444952=:7360--
|
